Absolute age records (2)

An absolute age record means that no one older has achieved a better result for ages above the world-record-age, and no one younger has achieved a better result for ages below the world-record-age.

It all started with the idee that athletes do their best performance of their life at a certain age, depending the sport they are practicing. In athletics we focus (as decathlon fans) on the ten events of the decathlon.

When do athletes perform at their highest level? Let us first have a look at the world record holders for the individual events:

A note about this table. This results does not show a kind of “proof” of what is the best age to expect your absolute top in your life. It gives an idee but Mondo Duplantis for example already jumped 3.97 with the pole vault when he was only 12 years old and his 6.22 is certainly not his last. It seems he’s planning for a real collection. Wayde van Nieckerk is recovering from Corona. An athlete can also decide not to compete anymore at an earlier age or to do less intense. Nevertheless decathletes seem mostly to be in the best shape of their life between their 26 and 28. The exception proofs the rule (look at Damian). The fourth column mentions the total of this athletes their age records. Somewhere at an earlier age, others are from later. Now we go to the decathletes with a list between 15 and 44 years old. Notice the definition given in the opening sentence.

Absolute age world record list:

Corrections are welcome!