'I want to live to be 100.' Longevity lessons from sports icons

Nadia Comǎneci, 63

Comăneci was just 14 years old when she scored the first ever perfect 10 by an Olympic gymnast, at the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal, and then she did it six more times in what many sports historians consider the greatest performance of the modern games. Her combination of athleticism and artistry captivated a global television audience. Five years after her retirement in 1984, she defected from Communist Romania to the United States and later married U.S. Olympic gymnast Bart Conner. They now run a gymnastics academy in Norman, Oklahoma.

“In my time, athletes used to compete and then they retired. I stopped exercising in the 1980s because there was not enough information yet on how keeping your body in good shape would help you navigate your long-term health better. I thought all that came from genetics! But I was playing soccer for fun with some of my friends, and I realized I was gasping to breathe, and I was like, Oh my gosh, that doesn’t seem right. Especially for a former athlete.

“My habits changed when I came to the United States and discovered Gold’s Gym. We have a house in Venice Beach, California, and the original one was right across the street, where Arnold Schwarzenegger worked out—I saw him there a lot. It was an introduction to a different kind of lifestyle, and then it becomes a part of your day-to-day life. I realized over time that my body was developing different muscles and that I felt better. That was the most important thing. I was even thinking better.

“Now I work out 40 minutes a day, no matter where I am. And I’m very realistic. Your body tells you what you can do. I don’t run, for example, because I feel my joints will go out too fast. People often say to me, ‘Nadia you’re in good shape!’ And I say, ‘Yeah, like a human shape.’ I’m in OK shape, but don’t expect me to do a double twist. If I miss that feeling, I go and get it by walking on a beam, doing some turns; getting out on the floor, doing some artistic moves. I stopped competing many years ago, but I didn’t get away from the sport. It’s always there for me.”

Carl Lewis, 64

In an era when top American sprinters were major celebrities, Lewis was a towering figure not just in the world of track and field but across sports: the fastest man alive throughout the 1980s and early ’90s. At age 30, he broke the world 100-meter record, finishing in 9.86 seconds. He likes to say, when athletes started going to Las Vegas in the ’80s, he hired a chef to improve his diet. Today he’s head coach of the track-and-field program at his alma mater, the University of Houston.

“It feels like everything changed when I turned 60. Forty was nothing. Fifty was nothing. Sixty—it’s a lot harder now. It’s just a lot of little things. It feels like if I look at a calorie now, I gain weight. And I can’t sleep through the night anymore. That’s one thing that’s kind of frustrating. And of course I wake up twice a week wondering, ‘Why does my back hurt?’ Or, ‘Why is my hamstring tight?’ In the history of time, we’ve only been getting old for like three seconds. We haven’t lived this long for very long, so we’re finding out so much about aging ourselves. 

“I get fulfillment now from doing something every year that I never thought I would do. I decided I wanted to bench 300 pounds at age 60, which is crazy. I got to 285. Then one year, I went skydiving. For 63, I wanted to do a split. I started training about six months beforehand, and I still haven’t done the split. It may take me until 65, but I’m going to do that damn split. And when I’m 65, I want to ride 65 miles on my bicycle in one day. The most I’ve gone is like 40. 

“I’ve always felt like you need to have two or three reasons why you want to push yourself. For me, I just feel better—physically and emotionally—when I work out and keep my weight down. And there’s definitely some vanity in there. I mean, come on, let’s be real! I ran around with more or less no clothes on. But also: I want to live to be 100.

“I try not to fall into the trap of saying, Oh, you were a super athlete, so you’re a superhuman. I’m a normal human.”

Cheryl Miller, 61

Women’s basketball history goes back further than Miller, but she was the sport’s first crossover superstar: leading the University of Southern California to two NCAA titles in the mid-1980s and being the centerpiece of the gold-medal-winning Team USA at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The WNBA didn’t come until well after her retirement, but she was one of the league’s inaugural head coaches with the Phoenix Mercury. 

“The last time I played in a pickup game, I was 27, maybe 28. But since then, I haven’t picked up a basketball competitively. The pain was already too bad back then. The crunching and the popping and the swelling—it wasn’t worth it. I had bone spurs in the front and in the back of my knee. I could only walk for 20 minutes and then I’d immediately have to get home and do the icing, the elevation, but there was no relief. I was miserable. But the only reason why I finally got knee replacements—one around Thanksgiving of ’23, the other in April of ’24—is I couldn’t ride a bike anymore. Why’d I wait so long? Because of that old warrior mentality. Because I was a big dummy.

“Now I have a second lease on life. I’m a kid in the candy store. I’m learning how to run again. I can at least get out there and put some shots up and move around. I wake up at four in the morning, get myself organized for the day, do my Bible study, and then I’m out the door and walking up hills and jogging, and it’s such a joy.

“I’ll see a pickup game and I want to possibly get into it, but I’m not quite there yet. That curiosity is there, though. It’s like, I wonder if I can still get up and down the floor, get hit a little bit, set a screen, try to box somebody out, grab a rebound, make that outlet pass, sprint down, finish the layup. Those are still things in the back of my mind. I wonder … With a smile on my heart, I wonder.”

Jerry Rice, 62

Rice is the NFL’s all-time leader in catches, receiving yards, and touchdowns. And yet, coming out of little-known Mississippi Valley State University, Rice faced concerns he might be too slow and too untested. He wound up playing 20 seasons as a wide receiver while earning a reputation for outworking everyone on the field and always staying in flawless shape. He won three Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers. He still lives in the Bay Area and co-founded an energy drink business, G.O.A.T. Fuel, with his daughter and son-in-law.

“I wasn’t the greatest athlete out there. I wasn’t the fastest. There were guys so much more gifted than I was—Cris Carter, Michael Irvin, Randy Moss. What they could do on the football field was amazing. I’m not saying those guys didn’t work hard, but I knew I had to work harder. I was always reaching when I played, and I’m still reaching after retiring from the game. I’m not dialing anything back now, man. I’m always challenging myself to be the best individual that I can be. It’s just in my DNA.

“I want people to know that after you step away from something that you’ve been doing for a long, long time, life is not over. I actually believe that when people have nothing to do after their careers, that’s when everything goes downhill. There’s nothing to wake up for and be excited about. I wake up every morning and, well, I’m not going to say I’m excited to work out, because I know it’s going to hurt—but it’s going to put me in a frame of mind that, hey, I really did something productive for my body and now I’m ready to be the greatest person that I can be during the day. I’m actually down to my playing weight now, and I’ve been out of the game for a long time.  

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“I do a lot of Peloton, a lot of CrossFit. I also have a big South African mastiff, and he likes to run, so we get out there. And yeah, the knee is going to swell sometimes, and you might be a little stiff when you get out of bed. But you’ve got to fight through that pain, knowing that the ultimate goal is that you’re still going to be flexible and active as you get older. So that’s my motivational speech: Challenge yourself every day, and it’s going to reward you in the end.”