This ILC webinar shared new findings on the longevity of sporting legends, supported by The Business School (formerly Cass City, University of London) based on new research by Professor Les Mayhew, Head of Global Research at ILC.
- The impact of professional sport on longevity
- How different sports fare when it comes to life expectancy and change through time
- Wider implications for the role of physical exercise in healthy ageing strategies
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Report launch: The longevity of sporting legends
1. Report launch: The longevity of
sporting legends
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2. Welcome from Chair
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Sir Brendan Foster CBE
Chairman of the Great Run Company and
founder of Great North Run
4. Baroness Tanni Grey-
Thompson DBE
Paralympian and Crossbench Peer in the
House of Lords
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5. Report launch: Presentation
of key research findings
Professor Les Mayhew, Head of Global
Research, ILC
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6. About ILC
We are the UK’s specialist think
tank on the impact of longevity
on society, and what happens
next.
We are one of the founding
members of the ILC Global
Alliance, an international
network on longevity with
members across 16 countries.
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7. Les Mayhew
Head of Global Research,
ILC
and Professor of
Statistics, Business
School, City University,
June 10th 2021
7
8. Motivation
• Promoting health is key policy aim and physical exercise is a proven
route to health and wellbeing
• Sport is a key way to engage in physical exercise but there are gaps
in our knowledge
• For example, little is known whether sport also increases longevity, if
your later years will be healthy years, or which sports do best
• Not everyone is into physical exercise and large numbers give up or
can’t be bothered but sport makes it fun
• Sport can be inspirational and confidence building– something that
you are good at when you are young but which opens up other
opportunities
9. Elite sport has the power to change lives
• Sport has a huge global following is worth billions to the
economy
• Elite athletes are adored by fans, they are role models and help
change behaviours
• But sport alters over time – the rules and safety, financial
rewards, training regimes, and intensity and governance
• Some sports are physically more challenging or dangerous and
careers may be shorter or longer
• So we need to go as far back in time as we can but there are
challenges……..
10. General considerations
• Life expectancy has increased massively over last 180 years–
how do we allow for this?
• We are comparing small numbers of people, our elites, with a
much bigger population (E&W)
• It means we need robust methods to prove whether differences
between sports and the general population are significant or not
• Age of death is backward looking – the oldest athletes will have
peaked in the 1950s so what about those alive today?
• How unusual is it for example that 50% ex-Wimbledon finalists
were still alive in 2020 or 50% all that ever played
11. Sevensports
Probablythe seven biggest spectator sports
in the UK
Largely took off in the second half of the
19th Century
Massively improved demographic datafrom
1840
Excellent historical record, especially years
of birth an death
Great anecdotes and changes in society to
draw upon
752sporting elites altogether in our sample
11
12. Methodology outline
There are two parts:
• First, a comparison the ages of death of athlete born in a
particular year with general males in the England and Wales
population
• Second a comparison the ratio of the number of athletes alive
in any given year with the number we would expect to be alive
based on the general population and year of birth
13. Charts showing the percentile of deaths
by age of death and year of birth
Mortality percentiles range from the from the first 10th percent of deaths to the
99th percentile of all deaths
14. Charts showing the percentile of deaths
by age of death and year of birth
Mortality percentiles range from the from the first 10th percent of deaths
to the 99th percentile of all deaths
X Y
15. Actual ages of death are then superimposed –
this example is for Wimbledon finalists
Arthur
Ashe
Of men’s finalists 55 have died. Arthur Ashe died at age 50 in
1993. Sidney Wood, the oldest, died age 98 in 2009
16. Cumulative % of Wimbledon deaths
versus the general male population
Male Wimbledon finalists have significantly lower mortality than the general
male population for every percentile of recorded deaths.
17. Cumulative % of Wimbledon deaths
versus the general male population
Male Wimbledon finalists have significantly lower mortality than the general
male population for every percentile of recorded deaths.
17
18. Longevity by sport based on mortality
This chart compares the
longevity in each sport with the
general male population. Golf
has a value of 1.13 which
means longevity is 13% higher
with tennis at 12%. Football just
scrapes in at 1% higher but
boxing mortality is 25% lower
than average and Derby winning
jockeys 12% lower
19. Survivorship in tennis
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
Observed/expected
Tennis
General male population
+36%
Ratio of tennis players alive in any year with the number expected to be alive based
on their year of birth from 1900 to 2020. A value greater than 1 means more are
alive than would be expected and vice versa
20. Boxing and tennis
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
Observed/expected
Tennis
Boxing
General male population
-7%
Boxing has a chequered history using this metric. It was slightly above one until 1960,
slipping back in 1970 and again 2010. Today it is 7% below the male average.
21. Football and tennis
+2%
Pre-war football appears to have been a different game in the 1930s with
an advantage peaking at plus 20%. It declined dropping below one in
1970 before hovering just above one and was 2% above parity in 2020.
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
Observed/expected
Tennis
Football
General male population
22. Relative survivorship from 1960 to 2020
1.02
0.97
1.09
1.15
1.10
1.09
1.03
0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4
Derby winners
Boxing
Golf
Tennis
Rugby
Cricket
Football
Males (general)
Relative survivorship (general males =1)
22
1.00
This chart shows
relative survivorship
from 1960 to 2020
The results are
similarly ranked to
what we found earlier
when looking at age
of death showing a
consistency over
time.
23. Which sports do best – 1960 to 2020?
• There is clear pecking order with only minor adjustments in rankings
over time
• Team sports do well but not as well as individual sports like golf and
tennis which are open to all comers
• Some sports have improved more than others but some like football
have bumped along the bottom or dipped like boxing
• Horse racing has benefited from safety improvements and is
performing much better today although only just above benchmark
• There is an argument for suggesting that the latest survival ratio is
the key statistic we should be monitoring
24. What about external factors?
Are there other explanatory factors
apart from risk of injury?
This table lists a few
• Ticks against each sport
indicates more likely to apply or a
cross which means ‘less likely
to apply.’
•Arrows show whether a factor has
become more influential post
1960, less influential or is
unaltered.
25. Conclusions
• The research shows that sport is good for physical health and longevity
• Sport bring happiness and joy to millions and is good for mental as well
• Sport is a useful vehicle for getting public health messages across to specificaudiences
• The methodology provides a basis for working with other sports and sporting associationsas
we have done here
• But I am also confident that it canbe used for more in-depth serious investigations as
required
26. Examples of future work
Subject to data availability
Focus on newer sports
Extend research to women, minorities and para-athletes
Deal with specific issuessuch as:
• Riskversus reward
• Long term injury
• Health in later years
28. Scott Reid
Global Protection & Analytics Actuary at
Zurich Insurance Company Ltd
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29. Professor Chris Brady
Chief Intelligence Officer at Sportsology
and formerly Professor of Management
Studies at Salford University
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31. Q&A
Please submit your questions to panellists via
the Q&A tab
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32. Closing remarks
Sir Brendan Foster CBE
Chairman of the Great Run Company and founder
of Great North Run
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33. Challenge workshop: Work for tomorrow
Innovating for an ageing workforce
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#WorkForTomorrow
Date: Thursday 24 June 2021
Time: 2.00pm – 4.00pm BST
(9.00am – 11.00am EDT)
34. Future of Ageing 2021: Reimagining
ageing in a changing world
Register at
http://futureofageing.org.uk/
@ilcuk
#FutureOfAgeing
Date: Thursday, 2 December 2021
Time: 9.00am – 5.00pm GMT
Location: Wellcome Collection, London
