Dr. Brigid McCarthy
Lecturer at in La Trobe University School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her broader research interests include sports, fandom and social media, with a particular focus on the online abuse of athletes, and media representations of athletes at the intersection of age and gender.
Email: brigid.mccarthy@latrobe.edu.au
Twitter: @ItsBrigidMcC
During a pre-tournament press conference in Paris, 42-year-old US basketballer Diana Taurasi responded to questions regarding her age by saying, “When you dedicate your whole life and career to something and you get the question of ‘why don’t you just retire’?…It is a bit disrespectful.”
Taurasi, whose career spans six Olympics, also jokingly pointed out that that the journalists in the room would feel the same.
Ageism is a systematic form of prejudice that occurs regularly and, often, subtly. While older adults are frequent targets, in sport, where peak performance is associated with youth, athletes can be subject to ageist attitudes even earlier. And even people who are uncomfortable with other forms of discrimination such as sexism and racism may feel justified expressing negative attitudes about older athletes’ participation in elite sport because of the intrinsic relationship between ageing and physical deterioration.
While the Olympic Games have always been about finding the fastest, highest and strongest, “youngest” and “oldest” frequently enter the conversation due to a longtime media fascination with the age extremes of participants. We see it in headlines celebrating the “youngest” medallist or listicles highlighting the oldest athletes at the Games as rarities. This creates associations between youth and exceptionalism and age and breaking barriers. Older athletes become “exceptions” to the rules of peak performance. Andrew Hoy, who won an Olympic medal in equestrian in Tokyo at 62, said he felt his age began to overshadow his accomplishments.
Another way attitudes to age are deployed is through eligibility rules. Rule 42 of the IOC Charter stipulates no age limits to Olympic participant except “as prescribed in the competition rules of an IF [International Federation] as approved by the IOC Executive Board.” This means that some athletes in some sports are restricted by age, sometimes.
Minimum age rules are often justified as a form of protection of minors who are considered vulnerable to physical and mental risks in elite sports. And in some cases, like gymnastics and figure skating, increases in minimum age eligibility have been directly prompted by child welfare issues within the sport.
But athletes can also be limited by maximum age rules. Olympic boxers must be under 40, a rule the sports’ former governing body has linked to the medical risks associated with long-term boxing. In football, FIFA Olympic age rules essentially render the Olympic competition an under-23 tournament, with limited exceptions for older players. This decision has been attributed to a desire to minimise the chances of the Olympics creating competition with the World Cup as the sport’s premier event.
More recently, World Aquatics instituted an upper age limit that impact swimmers taking up “universality” places, a qualification pathway designed by the IOC to increase participation of underrepresented NOCs. In Paris, universality swimmers had to be under the age of 30 and could not have already competed in two Olympics to encourage the development of youth talent in these nations.
While minimum age rules appear justifiable when instituted to protect minors, as Sarah Teetzel has already argued, upper age rules could constitute discrimination in that they restrict adult athlete’s autonomy regarding participation decisions.
Some older athletes like boxers Mary Kom and Kaye Scott have publicly voiced their discontent regarding age rules. There has also been attempts to appeal them. In 2023, the Cook Islands Aquatics Federation appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) for an exemption to the new universality rule, as two-time Olympian Wesley Roberts was the highest-ranked athlete competing for that nation. Earlier this year, the Philippine Olympic Committee submitted an appeal to the IOC for 45-year-old boxer Manny Pacquiao compete at the Paris Games. Both athletes were rejected.
Another issue regarding ageism is that while prejudice impacts both men and women, it can be further intensified at the intersection of gender. Diana Taurasi signalled her awareness of this during the same press conference when she told reporters that “only a woman would have 20 years of experience and it’s an Achilles heel.” Similarly, the Olympics website profiled 71-year-old marathon runner Kathrine Switzer, who said she finished battling through a youth of encountering sexism toward female distance runners only to then encounter ageism.
Australian boxer Kaye Scott has also pointed out that boxing’s upper age limits particularly impact women, as they are typically the ones who take out time for their career to have children. Some minimum age rules also impact disciplines differently. For example, ITF eligibility rules state that male tennis players can enter the Olympics younger (at 14) than women (at 15).
Age is an immutable element of identity outside the control of Olympic participants, yet ageism can manifest in a range of ways. It is expressed in cultural attitudes to age participation, expressed by media coverage and sports fans, but also through rules about who is allowed to participate in the Games. The sport-specific approach to Olympic age rules creates an inconsistency that appears to run contra to the IOC’s inclusive philosophy. Meanwhile, the less codified forms of ageism that are ingrained in sport culture can manifest in both subtle and overt ways.
