When it comes to professional sports, the ages of the participants will vary for all sorts of reasons.

It is not unusual for some sports to ask the participants to begin their journeys at a young age and therefore walk away from it at an equally young age, relatively speaking.

Meanwhile, there are other sports in which the maturity of the participant is key to their ability to be able to perform at their very best. Then there are numerous different activities that are extremely taxing on the body, whilst others have very little impact on the body and allow those taking part to keep going for many more years.

Sports with a Relatively Young Retirement Age

In terms of sports that see those taking part in them walk away at a reasonably young age, here are the ones that come at the top of the list:

Gymnastics

The elite level of gymnastics as a sport asks those taking part to begin their training at a very young age. It is not unusual for children as young as five to be taking on the likes of balance beams and pommel horses, for example.

The result of that is that such participants usually have to call it a day at a young age, relative to other sports, as their bodies simply can’t take the kind of punishments that they get put through on a regular basis. When Aly Raisman was part of the United States of America’s Olympic gymnastics team, for example, her nickname was ‘grandma’ when she was 22-years-old.

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There is a reason why most gymnasts only manage to compete in one or two Olympics, never to be seen again. The regiment that they have to engage in during training is such that it is virtually impossible for them to go through that without being in extreme pain.

Many have to retire from the world of gymnastics at an age that is lower than many other sports even see the participants turning professional. The intense physical strain of training and performing is one thing, whilst the necessity to see younger people take part because of their flexibility and strength is also clear.

Swimming / Diving

Although there are some swimmers and divers that are able to compete into their early 30s, by that point in their lives the vast majority have walked away from the sport that they love. As with gymnastics, the physicality of the sport is such that it asks a lot of the body of those taking part in it, so pushing their bodies through that on a regular basis is extremely difficult to do.

Diving in particular asks a lot of those doing it when it comes to the twists, turns and movements that the bodies need to make before they hit the water, so it is little surprise that they need to be young to cope.

SWIMMING:Australia’s most successful Olympian Emma McKeon has today announced her retirement from all competitive swimming.She retires with:14 x Olympic medals (6 🥇)20 x Comm Games medals (14 🥇)20 x World Championship Medals (5 🥇)📸Delly Carr

— HER WAY Sports Media (@herwaysportsmedia.bsky.social) 2024-11-24T22:52:29.117Z

The majority of swimmers and divers tend to hit the peak physically when they are teenagers or in their early 20s. By the time they have hit their mid-20s, it is much less likely that they will be able to keep up with the work of those five or ten years younger than them.

They will almost all continue swimming, but most will only do so recreationally or will look for an alternative form of swimming that they can compete in rather than looking to still do it in the same discipline that they have previously mastered. The toll taken on the body is simply too much to do it for more than a decade or so.

Sports with a Relatively Old Retirement Age

Just as there are sports in which the competitor is forced to walk away at a relatively young age, so too are there others that take much less of a toll on the body and allow the players to keep going for many years beyond what might otherwise be considered their peak. Here is a look at some of them:

Golf

In terms of sports that require the least physically from the participants, golf is obviously high up on the list. Although the older people get, the more power that they tend to lose for the likes of their drives, it is still the case that golfers are able to keep playing until an extremely late age.

Here is a list of the age of some of the golfers from the last and the age at which they left the list of the top 100 golfers in the world:

• Greg Norman: 47-years-old
• Tom Watson: 49-years-old
• Lee Trevino: 50-years-old
• Jack Nicklaus: 51-years-old

When you consider other sports and try to think of the top 100 participants, it is difficult to imagine many that have people considered to be amongst the best in the world in their mid-40s. Even after that point, golf has a tour dedicated to older golfers who can no longer be considered likely candidates to win Majors or other Tour events, but who can still be expected to play better rounds than most amateurs.

As a result, there are plenty of golfers who continue to travel the world and playing the sport that they love well into their 70s or 80s, which would be unthinkable in the majority of sports out there.

Equestrian Sports

Although something like jump racing obviously takes its toll on the jockeys that ride in it, most equestrian sports are significantly more gentle than that.

Riders are less likely to keep going with flat racing too, given the speed that races are conducted at and the possibility of falling and getting an injury, but something such as dressage is much more likely to see the participants develop the necessary skills to keep operating into the later years of their lives. Research carried out into equestrian sports shows that the median age for women was 35, whilst it was 38 for men.

People obviously keep riding even after the point that they have retired professionally, which is a good sign that the sport is capable of being carried out by older people. In 2022, Jimmy Quinn won a race at Newmarket Racecourse having led from the start, in spite of the fact that he was 55-years-old at the time.

It shows that even something like flat racing can still see people taking part in it well beyond the age that they would have been expected to retire from the top level of the likes of football or hockey. Although they are few and far between, such competitors continue in equestrian events where possible.