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Old gold: how action sports athletes are challenging age stereotypes and redefining lifelong physical activity

On The Conversation, Dr Nick Maitland, co-author and University of Canterbury lecturer in Sports Management and Marketing, explains how pioneers of action sport continue to reshape expectations of what is possible – independent of their age.

Photo by Bryan Turner on Unsplash.

These demographic and cultural shifts have been highlighted recently by the remarkable achievements and career highlights of some of these sports’ greatest exponents.

In the past week, we’ve seen legendary American surfer Kelly Slater win the prestigious Pipeline contest in Hawaii, just a few days shy of his 50th birthday, beating 24-year-old Hawaiian local Seth Moniz.

This was Slater’s 56th career victory, on top of 11 world titles won over three decades of elite-level surfing. Having claimed his first world title at 20, he routinely competes against athletes three decades his junior.

A few days later, US snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis – at her fourth Winter Olympics – won the snowboard cross gold medal at the age of 36. Jacobellis was publicly criticised at the 2006 Winter Olympics for falling and losing the lead after a celebratory manoeuvre on the penultimate jump in a speed event – infamously known as the “Lindsey Leap”.

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