Adrienne Shum

It’s an established trend - Olympic athletes are getting older. Advancements in sports science, training programs, and increased funding have contributed to the career longevity of Olympic athletes.

What’s interesting is that not only are Olympic athletes getting older, the age gap between male and female athletes is shrinking. The age gap between genders was 3.6 years in 1980. In 2021, it fell to 1. The average age of female Olympians is now closer to that of their male counterparts more than ever before.


		# create average df

		average <-simple_age %>%

		summarise_at(vars(-Sex), funs(mean(., na.rm=TRUE)))


		# create graph

		lollipop <- ggplot(simple_age, aes(Age, Year)) +

		geom_line(aes(group = Year), colour="lightgrey", size=3)+

		geom_point(aes(color = Sex), size=3)+ 

		labs(y="Year", x="Average age")+

		theme_ipsum_pub()+

		ylim(1973,2020)+

		xlim(20.5,28)+

		theme(legend.position = "none")+

		scale_color_manual(breaks = c("M", "F"), values=c("#FF4F29", "#6100FA"))+

		theme(axis.text.x=element_text(angle=45, hjust=1),

		panel.background = element_rect(fill = "transparent",colour = NA),

		plot.background = element_rect(fill = "transparent",colour = NA))

		+ coord_flip() + geom_point(data=average, shape="-", size=6, colour="darkgrey") 

		lollipop #view graph

Female athletes are getting older. Here's why.