A study marking the 70th anniversary of Sir Roger Bannister’s sub-four-minute mile shows that the first 200 runners to achieve this milestone live nearly five years longer than average, underscoring the long-term health benefits of aerobic fitness.
Professor Mark Haykowsky, the Research Chair in Aging and Quality of Life in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta, says the findings published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine demonstrate the vital importance of aerobic fitness. Professor Andre La Gerche, a world-renowned sports cardiologist who heads the HEART Laboratory supported by St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Australia, says: “Our study set out to see how exercise affected elite athletes over the long term. We know that elite athletes have bigger hearts due to their sustained aerobic output and there was some belief that this could affect their health and longevity, but we found the opposite.