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The phenomenon of age.

I remember as a teenager I cut out a picture of Sir Stanley Matthews from a sports magazine (probably Stadium). He was then nearly 50 years old and playing for Stoke City football team in England's top league. Why I cut him out I don't know, but I thought it was incredible that someone was playing top football at 50. A lot has changed since 1965, the sport is much more of a business than it used to be, early specialisation and concentration on fitness is common. The training process is scientific, but you can't do top sport without love. Professional sport, and to some extent semi-professional sport, is hard work, sacrifice and labour. But also joy, pleasure, ecstasy and happiness. Table tennis players Orlowski and Panský make not only themselves, but also spectators and fans happy in the Czech Republic. And we are talking about sixty-year-olds who play the highest competition in their sport. A current example is Jaromír Jágr (47), a native of Kladno, who, after finishing his NHL career, is still trying his hand at his own hockey club, for which he is likely to play soon. Canadian hockey player Gordie Howe played NHL hockey well past 40 and played on the same line as his two sons. Even in clearly speed and power sports such as sprinting or tennis, there is occasionally someone who defends the "ID" data. Merlene Ottey has an Olympic bronze in the hundred metres at the age of forty, Roger Federer is a world tennis number three despite being thirty-seven. If we were to develop a reflection on doping in relation to these athletes, we would probably be embarrassingly wrong. I believe that the workings of these phenomena of world sport are based on a combination of athletic talent, genetic luck, sensible lifestyles and an immeasurable love of their sport. And age? That's just a number.

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