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Gordie Howe
Born
Ice hockey, Detroit Red Wings, Houston Aeros and Hartford Whalers. Howe won six scoring titles and four Stanley Cups with Detroit and retired in 1971, then returned two years later in the rival WHA to play on a line with his sons Mark and Marty, winning that league's MVP award in his mid-forties. He played every game of a final NHL season in 1979–80 at the age of 51 and 52, scoring 15 goals.
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Martina Navratilova
Born
Tennis. Navratilova won 18 Grand Slam singles titles, including nine at Wimbledon, with a serve-and-volley game. After retiring from singles in 1994 she returned to the tour as a doubles specialist in 2000, using the same net game in a format that rewarded it, and won her last major, the 2006 US Open mixed doubles, a month before her 50th birthday.
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Paolo Maldini
Born
Football, AC Milan and Italy. Maldini made his Milan debut at 16 in 1985 and played his last match at 41 in 2009, all for one club. He made his name as an attacking left-back, then moved into the centre of defence as his pace declined, relying on positioning instead of recovery speed, and won the last of his five European Cups, in 2007, at 38.
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Ryan Giggs
Born
Football, Manchester United. Giggs played for United from 1991 to 2014 and won 13 league titles, a record. He began as a fast left winger who beat defenders on the outside, and in his thirties moved into central midfield, where passing and positioning mattered more than speed, a change that let him win his last title in 2013 at 39.
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Andrea Pirlo
Born
Football, Brescia, AC Milan, Juventus and Italy. Pirlo started as an attacking midfielder behind the strikers, struggled to hold a place in that role, and was moved into a deep playmaking position in front of the defence, first at Brescia under Carlo Mazzone and then at Milan under Carlo Ancelotti. From there he won two Champions Leagues, the 2006 World Cup and, after Milan let him go at 32, four straight Serie A titles with Juventus.
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Dara Torres
Born
Swimming, United States. Torres swam at five Olympic Games between 1984 and 2008, retiring and returning more than once. At her final Games in Beijing, aged 41, she won three silver medals, including the 50 metres freestyle by one hundredth of a second short of gold, after rebuilding her training around short sprint events and much more recovery time than in her twenties.
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Roger Federer
Born
Tennis, Switzerland. Federer switched to a larger racket head in 2014 and, after knee surgery cost him most of 2016, came back with a flatter, more aggressive one-handed backhand taken early, a change worked on with coach Ivan Ljubičić. At 35 he won the 2017 Australian Open, beating Rafael Nadal in the final, and added Wimbledon that year and the 2018 Australian Open for a 20th major.
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Oksana Chusovitina
Born
Artistic gymnastics, Soviet Union, Germany and Uzbekistan. Chusovitina won team gold for the Unified Team in 1992 and has competed at a record eight Olympic Games, representing three countries. In a sport where most careers end in the early twenties, she narrowed her focus to vault, the apparatus where power and a single difficult routine matter most, and won Olympic silver on it for Germany in 2008 at 33.
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Jaromír Jágr
Ice hockey, Pittsburgh Penguins, Kladno and many others. Jágr won two Stanley Cups as a teenager in 1991 and 1992 and five scoring titles in his prime as a fast, puck-carrying winger. As his speed declined he relied on his size and on protecting the puck along the boards, played NHL hockey until he was 45, finishing second on the all-time points list, and carried on playing in the Czech leagues into his fifties.
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James Anderson (cricketer)
Born
Cricket, England and Lancashire. Anderson played Test cricket from 2003 to 2024 and took 704 wickets, the most by any fast bowler. Early in his career England coaches tried to remodel his action, which led to a stress fracture; he went back to his natural action, then added reverse swing and the wobble-seam delivery, which kept him effective on flat pitches and abroad well into his late thirties and beyond.
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Phil Mickelson
Born
Golf, United States. Mickelson won his first PGA Tour event as an amateur in 1991 and his first major at 33. In his late forties, as the tour game shifted towards power, he worked to add driving distance rather than rely on his short game, and in 2021 he won the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island at 50, the oldest major champion in history.
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Fernando Alonso
Born
Motor racing, Spain. Alonso became Formula One's youngest champion in 2005 and won again in 2006. When competitive F1 seats dried up he raced in other series, winning the World Endurance Championship and the Le Mans 24 Hours twice with Toyota and competing in the Indianapolis 500 and the Dakar Rally, then returned to F1 and scored podiums again in 2023 in his forties.
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Eliud Kipchoge
Athletics, Kenya. Kipchoge won the 5,000 metres world title in 2003 at 18 and Olympic track medals in 2004 and 2008. When he failed to make Kenya's 5,000 metres team for 2012 he moved to the marathon, and over the next decade won Olympic gold in 2016 and 2021, set two world records and ran the first sub-two-hour marathon in a specially organised event in 2019.
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LeBron James
Born
Basketball, Cleveland, Miami, the Los Angeles Lakers and others. James entered the NBA straight from high school in 2003 as a driving, athletic forward, and over more than two decades has added a reliable three-point shot, a post game and a playmaking role in which he often runs the offence as a point guard. Those changes helped him win four titles with three clubs and become the league's all-time leading scorer.
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Vince Carter
Basketball, Toronto Raptors, New Jersey Nets and others. Carter won the 2000 Slam Dunk Contest and was an eight-time All-Star as a high-flying scorer. In his thirties he remade himself as a bench player and three-point shooter, which kept him in the league for 22 seasons, a record, until he retired in 2020 at 43.
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Cristiano Ronaldo
Born
Football, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus, Al-Nassr and Portugal. Ronaldo arrived at United in 2003 as a tricky winger who ran with the ball, then turned himself into a goal-scoring wide forward and, in his thirties, a central striker who rarely dribbles but attacks crosses and the space in the penalty area. That change helped him become the leading scorer in men's international football and the Champions League.
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Luka Modrić
Born
Football, Tottenham, Real Madrid, AC Milan and Croatia. Modrić won six Champions Leagues with Real Madrid and the 2018 Ballon d'Or after leading Croatia to the World Cup final. In his late thirties he accepted a reduced, often substitute role at Madrid, playing shorter spells and dropping deeper to set the tempo, and in 2025 he joined Milan at the age of 39.
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