Dr. Michael Joyner, an anesthesiologist at the U.S. Mayo Clinic who studies the effects of ageing on athletes, said normal "physiological" ageing starts at 30 but athletes can delay this until their late 30s or 40s with prolonged, intense training.
He said lab data showed that for physiological factors associated with endurance sports the decline is about 10 percent per decade starting at 30 but this can be halved with continued hard training, especially if it remained intense.
"If you look at top performers in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, the volume of training (hours per day) is sometimes down, but they keep the intensity high. They usually also do things to prevent age-associated declines in muscle mass," he said.
But Joyner said that while all elite athletes had some physical gifts it was also their will to win and ability to perform under pressure that made them succeed.
"All things being equal the person who can put forth a maximum effort and at the same time relax has a real edge. A lot of it is learning how to compete in a relaxed way when the pressure is on," he told Reuters.
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