People often forget just how good you must be to become a professional athlete. It doesn’t always seem that way, especially when your team’s striker misses an easy chance in the last minute of a football game, but it’s true. Anyone who has made it to the elite world of professional sports is so infinitely better than the average joe at their sport that they’re essentially playing a different game.
Competing just once in a professional sporting event is an achievement. Making a career in the sport is another level. And then there are the people who seem to defy all logic. These are the people with above-average careers; whereas most people have ten years at the top (if they’re lucky), they just seem to go on and on. They’re superhuman!
In this blog, we’ll run through some of the athletes that can count longevity among their many other achievements.
Frankie Dettori
Longevity in a sport is one thing, but longevity mixed with sustained success? That takes something special. Frankie Dettori has been riding horses — and winning — since 1986 and still shows no signs of slowing down. Despite being fifty years old, he’s still a dominant force in the world of horse racing.
He was named ‘World’s Best Jockey’ in 2020, and experts that provide horse racing tips nearly always back the Italian to get a placed-finish when he races. Will Frankie ever stop racing? It’ll happen one day, but there’ll probably always be a Dettori at the races; his son Rocco won the Shetland Grand National in 2017, aged only 12, suggesting a bright future in the sport.
Tom Brady
Tom Brady is a special case in more ways than one. Just think about this: the average career of an NFL player lasts only three years. Tom Brady has been a professional for more than twenty years. And as anyone who knows anything about American Football will know, he hasn’t just been playing; he’s been winning.
He’s played in ten Super Bowls with two teams (the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers), winning seven. That’d be extremely impressive by any standards, but what’s most incredible, what is truly staggering, is that he won one of those Super Bowls — his most recent victory, in 2020 — when he was forty years of age. And he didn’t just win; he was the MVP of the game, too. He’s a phenomenon, and you really wouldn’t bet against him picking up another winner’s medal before he retires for good.
Gary Player
OK, let’s be honest: golf isn’t the most strenuous sport you can play (though it’s more physically demanding than most people believe). It is, however, extremely competitive. If you make it to the Masters Tournament at any age, then you’re an excellent golfer. Gary Player played in fifty-two, the last time in 2009 when he was seventy-three.
He won that competition back in 1978, which was his final major championship, but he wasn’t just making up the numbers in the years that followed. He made the cut when he was sixty-two, which we should consider as noteworthy as picking up a green jacket. His nickname is “Mr Fitness,” for obvious reasons.
Martina Navratilova
Martina Navratilova holds the record for the longest career in tennis. She made her professional debut in 1975 and played her final match in 2006, thirty-one years later! Some athletes are just ageless. Like Player, she didn’t just make up the numbers.
Indeed, she holds the record for most victories in single tournaments, doubles tournaments, and overall matches won: in total, she has 2,189 victories under her belt. Some career!
