Michael Joyner, M.D., a Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist and exercise researcher, has been featured prominently in national and international news coverage surrounding record-breaking performances at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. In today’s New York Times, for instance, he was quoted in an article about how athletes can compete effectively even as they approach their 40s:
As years go by, many tire of the discipline, said Dr. Michael Joyner, an exercise researcher at the Mayo Clinic. “How much do you want to suffer every day?” he said.
But in the end, whether an athlete can continue often comes down to money. One reason coaches and exercise researchers expect to see many older Olympians in the future is that for the first time in many sports, athletes are finding that they can make a living by competing.
Joyner offered swimming as an example. Elite swimmers cannot train themselves. They need a coach, a 50-meter pool and financial support that will allow them to spend three to five hours a day training. Such a schedule makes it difficult to hold a full-time job.
Earlier this week, Dr. Joyner was featured on CTV’s Canada AM program, in an extended interview. Here’s an excerpt:
The sheer number of top-notch athletic performances is thanks to consistent advancements in technology, more efficient training and a higher concentration of participants, suggests a new study out of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist Dr. Michael J. Joyner studied marathon and other long-distance race results over the last 125 years and found that athletes have been making dramatic leaps in performance since the 1920s. Today’s athletes are faster and stronger than ever before.
For example, the pace of the men’s and women’s marathon today is about as fast as the 10,000-metre pace was just after the Second World War.
“It’s a convergence of more and harder training, older athletes training for longer, more technology and more people,” Joyner told Canada AM on Monday.
Read the entire article here, and see this earlier post on Mayo Clinic subject experts available for interviews.
