Study finds that Olympic winners die earlier than regular humans

[xoxo Craig 55,649]

10 minutes ago, reysus said:

I can't speak for swimming as much, but cycling is still a low-contact sport (except for crashes obviously) but top Tour de France level riders are not very healthy. Sure, they're extremely fit, but they have so little body fat and during 3-week long races and peak training periods, they have to consume so much food, and a lot of them still end up losing weight because it's unavoidable (and keep in mind that these athletes have a whole team of sports nutritionists and coaches behind them). Their bodies are extremely fragile. Of course aerobic activity is healthy, but the Olympic level is just something else. And of course head injuries are never good and far worse than we even understand right now, but 'low-impact' sports still pose other risks.

You've also got to take into account how dirty the sport is... the most decorated cyclist of all time, Lance Armstrong, was doping for his whole career. Even though the sport has moved on passed that, there have been multiple drug cheating accusations made against many prolific cyclists. Taking drugs will have a profound effect on someones body for life. I think in that case, it would be that the drugs do more harm than the sport itself. I can't really speak much for cycling, but I'd imagine everything would be controlled by doctors and stuff... I'd say that's definitely unhealthy. The Tour de France isn't an Olympic event though, and its more or less the marathon of cycling... if someone solely wants to become an Olympian, I think their health should be fine providing they know what they are doing and they are free from performing enhancing drugs

[DC 25,164]

Well, I’m not an Olympic winner, so I guess I’m alright 

 

But I did win best Spammer at @Doot’s Clownies, let’s see how fast that kills me 

[Supersonic 49,376]

8 hours ago, xoxo Craig said:

It depends on the sport, and also if the athletes were on performance enhancing drugs. 

That is correct, but performance enhancing drugs don't seem to have much of an actual impact on the actual mortality rate as the study found. East German Olympians (which were notorious for performance enhancing drugs) had a lower mortality rate than the average German person, while West German atheletes (where the system cracked down more on doping and punished it instead of encouraging it) the mortality rate was always significantly higher. Also athletes who were active at the height of doping had a smaller mortality rate, than athletes who are active as of now.

Of course you could argue that you don't know how top athletes illegaly enhance their performance nowadays that goes undetected, but I'd say the overall amount of doping has decreased because of increased control and people calling out & taking a public stand against it.