Health · Longevity
Which sport adds the most years to your life?
The answer is not running. It is not the gym. It is tennis. And the reason may surprise you.
We all know sport is good for us. But is one sport better than another? For years, no one really knew.
Now we have numbers. Three big studies have put a figure on it. They counted the years. And the results are strange.
Tennis beats jogging. Pole vaulters live long lives. Sprinters do not. Let us look at why.
The weekend hobby test
The best study on this comes from Denmark. It is called the Copenhagen City Heart Study. Researchers followed 8,577 people. They watched them for up to 25 years. Then they checked who was still alive.
They compared each sport to sitting still. Here is what they found.
Years of life gained, compared to a sedentary life. Source: Copenhagen City Heart Study, 2018.
Tennis came out on top. Nearly ten extra years. Badminton was next. Then football.
Jogging came far down the list. So did the gym. That seems odd. Runners are fit people. So why do they lose?
The scientists spotted a pattern. Look at the top three sports. Each one needs another person. You cannot play tennis alone. You need a partner. So the boost may not be the sport at all. It may be the company.
What the elite tell us
Now let us look at the very best. Not weekend players. Olympians.
A 2024 study tracked 95,210 athletes. It covered 44 sports. It went back to people born in 1862. Here the story flips.
Elite male athletes only. Blended from three studies, so treat as a guide, not a league table.
Pole vaulters win. They gain 8.4 years. Gymnasts are close behind with 8.2. Tour de France cyclists gain about eight.
Then look at the bottom. Sprinters lose. So do discus throwers. Sumo wrestlers lose almost ten years.
Why? The scientists have a theory. Pole vault and gymnastics are mixed sports. They need power. They also need stamina. That blend seems to be the sweet spot.
Body size matters too. Lean sports do well. Heavy sports do badly. Sumo is the clearest case of all.
Men and women split
Here is the oddest part. The story is not the same for both sexes.
One study looked at Olympic track and field. It covered the Games from 1928 to 1948. It split the results by sex. The pattern almost turns upside down.
There was no women’s Olympic marathon in this era, so that bar is blank. Source: BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation, 2017.
Male high jumpers gained 3.7 years. Female high jumpers gained 7.1. That is nearly double.
The discus is stranger still. Men lost a little. Women gained almost seven years.
So the idea that throwers die young is a male story. It does not hold for women. But one thing is true for both. Sprinters sit at or below the average person.
Read this before you buy a racket
These numbers are tempting. They are also easy to misread. So here is the honest bit.
None of this proves cause. It only shows a link. Tennis players are not just people who play tennis. They tend to be richer. They tend to be healthier to start with. They tend to have more friends. Any of those could be doing the work.
The elite numbers are worse for this. Olympians are not like you. They are not like me. Their bodies were rare before they ever trained. So do not read the pole vault result as a plan.
And the studies do not agree on method. The chart of elite sports mixes three of them. The bars point the right way. They are not exact.
The real lesson is smaller and better. Move. Do it with other people. Do something you will still enjoy in ten years.
That is the thread running through all of it. The gap between sitting still and doing almost anything is huge. The gap between one sport and another is much smaller.
So play tennis if you love tennis. Run if you love running. The worst sport is the one you quit.
Sources
- Schnohr P. et al. Various leisure-time physical activities associated with widely divergent life expectancies: the Copenhagen City Heart Study. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2018.
- Altulea A., Rutten M.G.S., Verdijk L.B., Demaria M. Sport and longevity: an observational study of international athletes. GeroScience, 2024.
- Differences in life expectancy between Olympic high jumpers, discus throwers, marathon and 100-metre runners. BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation, 2017.
- Foulkes S. et al. Longevity of the first 200 sub-four-minute-mile runners, plus reviews of Tour de France cyclists and elite endurance Olympians.