Centennial cyclist Robert Marchand’s record impresses researchers. The reduction in its performance is quite limited for its age.
While the 2016 Summer Olympics will be held in less than a month in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), a few hundred-year-old athletes will still be alive to observe their distant successors. Sometimes 80 years after their own participation.
On this occasion, a team of French researchers (1) analyzed the sporting records of these champions of longevity in different disciplines in comparison with world records, all age categories combined.
On websites of sports associations and federations, Romuald Lepers and his colleagues have thus identified 60 performances achieved by 19 centenarians, in 3 disciplines: athletics, swimming and cycling. In general, and even if these are real achievements, their results are obviously very far from world records: -78% on average among these centenarians compared to the world record. But one of them clearly stands out.
This is the centenary Robert Marchand and his cycling record. In 2014, at the age of 102, the man traveled nearly 27 km in an hour. Flashed at more than 30 km / h in the velodrome of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, he appears to be the most impressive athlete because the reduction in his performance is quite limited despite his age. She would even be an exception. Scientists have recorded a reduction in performance of just 50.6% compared to the world record for the hour in this discipline, obtained by Bradley Wiggins in 2015 with more than 54 km.
102 years old but the health of a man of 45
Robert Marchand therefore travels by bike half as fast as the record holder in his discipline, where other hundred-year-old athletes run or swim on average four times slower. If these differences may seem important, they correspond to real exploits, believes the scientific community. “Can you imagine achieving these performances more than 100 years ago? », Asks Romuald Lepers, main author of the study. He explains it first of all by the remarkable physiological characteristics of the athlete.
Véronique Billat, research director at UBIAE (2), closely follows Robert Marchand. Two years ago in The Parisian, she explained that she was interested in the effects of physical exercise on oxygen consumption. “The more we gain in consumption, the faster we can go, have energy, ensure good heart and muscle health”.
A demonstration that the physiologist managed to do with Robert Marchand. Through exercise, her maximum oxygen volume increased from 15 to 38 ml / min / kg. And his maximum heart rate is 157 beats per min. Concretely, at 102 years old, he has the energetic power of a man of 45. Researchers have also demonstrated a decline in performance with age which is less important for cycling compared to athletics or swimming. This is due to the very nature of the sport, the team says.
Romuald Lepers, Inserm researcher: ” You can train in cycling relatively late in the years. It is not a traumatic sport unlike running. It is easy to maintain with age… “
Fight against the effects of aging
These works, published recently in the journal Age and Aging offer new perspectives to better understand how the human body can fight against the deleterious effects of aging. The next work carried out by these Burgundian researchers will aim to answer several questions: what is the past of these champions, have they always been athletic, at what age did they start their physical activity? “These hundred-year-old champions are examples for other elderly people, you have to understand how they got there,” concludes Romuald Lepers.
Romuald Lepers : ” It requires genetics which are very good. But we will also seek to know if they follow a particular diet.… “
(1) Inserm Unit 1093 “Cognition, Action and Sensorimotor Plasticity” at the University of Burgundy
(2) The Laboratory of Integrative Biology of Adaptations to Exercise which depends on INSERM and the Génopole d’Evry (Essonne)
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