Athletes competing at the peak of their sport or league well into their 40s, or for the longest time. Not necessarily ranked in order just a list:

1. Brady
2. Nolan Ryan
3. ?
4. ?
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?
10. ?

Kareem, Stockton, Lebron (given he started at 18)

A bunch of football players like Ibrahimovic, Giggs, Maldini, Totti, Buffon, Ronaldo is getting there too

Federer and Serena Williams. In the 90s and 00s tennis players were basically cooked by 30 and winning a slam at 32 was crazy impressive. Winning in your late 30s, especially in the women's where the peak seems to be 16-25 is pretty nuts

Jack Nicklaus

George Foreman taking 10 years out, coming back at 38 and becoming the heavyweight champion at 45

Holyfield should have won the heavyweight title at 48 if it weren't for rigging

Gordie Howe: 100, 99, 102, 68, 96 PTS age 45-49; played until 51

Cy Young: .982, .893, 1.108, 1.078 WHIP age 39-43; 511 wins ldo

Jerry Rice: 92/1211/7 at 40, 63/869/2 at 41

Hank Aaron getting the HR record while never hitting more than 45 in a seaon, and 40 at age 39 (and 20 at 40) deserves mention.

Keith Richards

What's always fascinated me are the guys who are merely above average in their prime and yet play forever.

You all know who I'm thinking of:

Jamie Moyer I think is even more extreme. He was 72-79 with an ERA of 4.44 (98 ERA+) going into his age 34 season, with zero all star appearance or Cy Young vote. He went 197-130 with an ERA of 4.17 (106 ERA+) for the rest of his career. Tim Wakefield is another good example.

Joaquin is still playing, for example.

Romario should probably be #1 on this list. I'm sure he could still score goals for mid tier sides. Certainly would score more than Joaquin.

Longevity scorer

add Phil Niekro to that list

Tom Watson wins 2009 British Open aged 59 if he flies his 8 iron 1 yard less on #18.

FlaSh

Mickelson.

fmp

(Until 47 at age 37!)

Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, and Randy Johnson all worthy of this list. Especially Clemens.

To a lesser extent Mariano Rivera, since closers workñoad is so little. But he certainly seemed capable of continuing after an age 43 season where he was still good.

I've always been extremely fascinated by such athletes.

Martina Navratilova kept going forever.

Great example. Others of this type - Daniel Nestor, Chris Chelios. Julio.Franco

Some more examples for this thread in general... Martin Brodeur, Mark Messier, Rickey Henderson, Jaromir Jagr, Zdeno Chara. Barry Bonds.

Hockey seems like a really tough sport to me, but for some reason quite a few players age well, even compared to something like baseball that seems much less demanding.

Baseball and golf really aren't sports so much as games

I can kind of agree with you on golf, but definitely not baseball.

Outside of the steroid years, players over 35 having success in MLB are quite rare. This is a clear indicator that the athletic ability needed to compete is very high, even if to the untrained eye baseball doesn't appear that.

When you play a baseball game, you barely get any exercise at all if you aren't a pitcher or catcher. But to earn your spot on that field, you generally still need to be a damn good athlete.

This is actually why I think for most kids, youth baseball is a big waste of time compared to sports like soccer or basketball. There's just so little involvement and activity on the game. I always liked practicing baseball so much more than the actual, somewhat boring games.

But to play with you argument, I would also say that things like running, cycling, swimming, and weight lifting, aren't sports. They are exercises. This is why I would never take someone like Michel Phelps seriously in a conversation about 'greatest athlete's when compared to someone like Djokovic/LeBron. The gap in skill level between swimming and tennis is absurd.

Tommy John. He won nearly 200 games after age 30, won double digit games twice in mid 40's.

The old George Blanda thing. He wasn't one of the better players in the league or anything but had a run of hero games how old, nearly 50 one year?

OH MY ... Satchel Paige. Don't know how much is legend and how much real, but he pitched well into his mid 40's still effective, then pitched a scoreless inning apparently age 92 or something.

Not sure if this is even the best option from that sport, Lasker was world champion for almost as long as the above was an active player. If we're going down this sort of route, I'd have to chuck in Phil Taylor

Surprised at only the one Jerry Rice mention so far tbh

Ronnie O'Sullivan too