Athletes who play tennis and other racket sports appear to live the longest, with tennis players gaining an average of 9.7 additional years of life expectancy compared to sedentary individuals, according to data from the Copenhagen City Heart Study. More broadly, athletes in mixed sports (combining endurance and strength demands) and endurance sports consistently outlive both power athletes and the general population. Olympic medalists across all sports live an average of 2.8 years longer than the general public, and US Olympians of both sexes live about 5.1 years longer than their peers.
Racket and Social Sports Lead the Pack
Tennis stands out as the single sport most strongly linked to increased lifespan. The 9.7-year advantage over inactive people is striking, and researchers believe it reflects more than just physical fitness. Racket sports combine bursts of high-intensity effort with moderate aerobic activity, and they’re inherently social. The social interaction component may independently reduce stress and improve mental health, both of which influence how long you live.
This evidence comes primarily from observational studies, meaning researchers can’t fully separate the effects of the sport itself from the personality traits and lifestyle habits of people who choose to play tennis. Still, the size of the association is hard to dismiss.
Why Mixed Sports Outperform Pure Endurance or Power
Sports that blend aerobic and anaerobic demands, like soccer, basketball, and tennis, appear to extend lifespan more than purely aerobic or purely power-based sports. The reasoning is straightforward: these athletes get the cardiovascular benefits of endurance training (lower blood pressure, reduced body fat, better insulin sensitivity) along with the muscular benefits of resistance work (preserved muscle mass, stronger bones, better balance). That combination protects against the diseases that kill most people: heart disease, metabolic disorders, and the frailty that comes with aging.
Endurance athletes also do well. Professional cyclists who competed in the Tour de France had a 17% increase in average longevity compared to the general population. Half of the general male population in those birth cohorts died by age 73.5, while half of Tour de France cyclists were still alive at 81.5. That’s an eight-year gap.
Power athletes, by contrast, show no clear survival advantage. A large meta-analysis covering more than 165,000 former athletes found that endurance and team sport athletes had significantly lower death rates from all causes and cardiovascular disease than the general population. Power athletes did not. Their cardiovascular death rate was essentially the same as non-athletes, with a slight trend toward higher risk.
The Cardiovascular Advantage
The primary reason athletes live longer is simple: they die less often from heart disease. A meta-analysis published in Sports Medicine found that male athletes overall had a 27% lower rate of cardiovascular death than the general population. Endurance athletes had the strongest protection, with a 37% lower cardiovascular death rate. Team sport athletes came in at 24% lower. Power athletes showed no significant reduction at all.
For US Olympians, the picture is similar. The single biggest contributor to their 5.1-year survival advantage was avoiding premature cardiovascular death. Among female Olympians, reduced heart disease alone accounted for 1.8 extra years of life, with lower cancer mortality adding another 1.1 years. Reduced deaths from respiratory disease, accidents, and metabolic conditions made up the rest.
Contact Sports Carry a Hidden Cost
Not all athletic careers are equally protective. Professional American football players have overall death rates that are 47% lower than the general US population, which sounds excellent. But that number masks a serious problem: their rate of neurodegenerative disease is three times higher than normal. Deaths from ALS and Alzheimer’s disease are four times higher than expected, almost certainly due to repeated head trauma sustained during play.
Professional soccer players show a 16% lower overall death rate compared to the general population, a meaningful but more modest benefit. Research on Scottish footballers has also raised concerns about dementia risk, though the data is less dramatic than for American football.
The takeaway is that the longevity benefits of elite sport can be partially offset by sport-specific injuries, particularly brain injuries from repeated impacts. Athletes in non-contact sports tend to retain their survival advantage more cleanly.
Female Athletes Live Longer Too
Most longevity research has focused on male athletes, but the data on women tells a consistent story. Female US Olympians lived 5.1 years longer than women in the general population, with better survival rates across nearly every cause of death. The primary driver was the same as for men: less cardiovascular disease. Women also saw meaningful reductions in cancer, respiratory disease, and deaths from external causes like accidents.
Nervous system diseases and mental illness did not contribute significantly to the longevity advantage for either sex, suggesting that elite sport neither helps nor hurts in those categories (with the notable exception of contact sports and brain injury).
Biological Aging in Athletes
There’s evidence that the benefits go beyond just avoiding disease. Telomeres, the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes that shorten as you age, are longer in elite athletes than in inactive people of the same age. One study of 61 elite athletes found significantly longer telomeres compared to 64 healthy but sedentary controls. Longer telomeres are associated with slower biological aging, which may help explain why athletes not only live longer but often maintain better physical function into old age.
Is There Such a Thing as Too Much?
The relationship between exercise and heart health may follow a U-shaped curve: too little is clearly harmful, moderate to high amounts are protective, but extreme volumes might carry some risk. Elite athletes typically train at five to ten times the amount recommended for the general public. While the vast majority of studies show that retired athletes have less heart disease and live longer, there are reports of intense long-term exercise causing structural changes to the heart, including scarring and irregular rhythms.
These cases are uncommon, and sudden cardiac events in athletes are almost always linked to pre-existing heart conditions that were never detected. The overall evidence is clear: even at elite levels, the benefits of athletic careers far outweigh the risks for most people. But the data does suggest that more is not always better, and that the sweet spot for longevity may involve the kind of varied, moderate-to-vigorous activity found in sports like tennis, soccer, and cycling rather than decades of extreme ultra-endurance training.