Racquet sports and lifespan

The numbers driving the racquet-sports longevity claim come from two different kinds of research: a 25-year population study in Copenhagen and a 2024 athlete analysis covering 95,210 former athletes across 44 sports. (mayoclinicproceedings.org; springer.com) In the Copenhagen City Heart Study, 8,577 adults reported which sports they played in the early 1990s and were then followed until March 22, 2017. The study estimated life-expectancy gains versus a sedentary group of 9.7 years for tennis and 6.2 years for badminton. (sciencedirect.com; usta.com) That same Copenhagen analysis put soccer at 4.7 years, cycling at 3.7, swimming at 3.4, jogging at 3.2, calisthenics at 3.1, and health-club activities at 1.5. The paper used Cox proportional hazards models with adjustment for confounding variables, which means the authors tried to account for differences such as age, education, smoking, and other baseline factors. (sciencedirect.com; usta.com) The newer athlete paper asked a different question. It compared the ages at death of international athletes with reference populations matched by sex, country, and year of death, and found racquet sports were associated with up to 5.7 extra years in men and 2.8 in women. (springer.com; ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) That 2024 study was heavily male: 95.5% of the 95,210 observations were men, and the authors said results for female athletes should be interpreted cautiously. It also found large differences across sports, with pole vaulting and gymnastics near the top for men and volleyball and sumo wrestling on the negative end. (springer.com; ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) The two studies are not measuring the same thing. The Copenhagen paper tracks ordinary adults who reported their leisure-time sports, while the GeroScience paper uses public records on elite or international athletes, so the headline numbers should not be treated as interchangeable. (mayoclinicproceedings.org; springer.com) The biggest caveat is that both are observational studies, not randomized trials. Art Kramer, a Northeastern University psychologist who studies exercise and the brain, said that means the research cannot prove racquet sports themselves caused the longer lives. (news.northeastern.edu) Researchers and commentators have offered plausible reasons for the pattern: racquet sports combine aerobic bursts, balance, coordination, and repeated decision-making, and they are often played with other people. The 2024 athlete paper said mixed aerobic-and-anaerobic demands may help explain the association, while Kramer pointed to the added role of social interaction. (springer.com; news.northeastern.edu) The safest reading is narrower than the viral posts. Across two separate datasets, racquet sports repeatedly show up near the top of longevity rankings, but the evidence shows association, not a guaranteed extra 9.7 years for any one player. (sciencedirect.com; springer.com; news.northeastern.edu)