It is interesting to observe how new sports develop. CrossFit for instance is a commercial endeavor yet is now treated by many as a sport in its own right. The below text is taken from the Wikipedia article on CrossFit as of June 2023.
"CrossFit, meaning cross-discipline fitness, was conceived as a company in 1996 as Cross-Fit. Greg Glassman and Lauren Jenai incorporated CrossFit, Inc. in 2000. They opened a gym in Santa Cruz, California in 2001 and posted their workouts on the Internet for their clients, and these workouts were then quickly adopted by individuals in the police, military, firefighting services."
eSports is another example of an interest or hobby that became a competitive sport. What began as a form of enjoyment for computer gamers acquired a competitive spirit and transcended into a new form of sport. Human desire for competition, for winners and losers, to see inspiring feats of performance, for engaging narratives and moving story lines has propelled sport towards the top of global culture. Where attention is directed, money follows. Sport is a multi-billion dollar industry from Premier League football to the NFL. But even emergent sports such as eSports can command significant attention and market value. Some figures estimate the eSports market at over 450 million viewers and over $1 billion in annual revenue.
The obvious question is one of semantics. How do we define sport, and what has the right to be characterised as sport? The Oxford English Dictionary gives the following definition:
"An activity involving physical exertion and skill, esp. (particularly in modern use) one regulated by set rules or customs in which an individual or team competes against another or others. Frequently in plural."
We (though not the first to do so) propose that activities and endeavors that slow or even reverse ageing in human bodies is also a sport. The invention of the first epigenetic clock by Steve Horvath in 2013 was a landmark achievement that allowed humans to measure their biological age against their chronological age. What can be measured, can be refined, improved, and compared. We now see individuals, perhaps most publicly Bryan Johnson, use the latest understanding of human nutrition, exercise, sleep and medicine to slow down and even reverse their rate of ageing as measured by epigenetic clocks.
Various leaderboards have now been constructed such as the Rejuvenation Olympics, which drive competition among hobbyists (or athletes) to see who can slow their rate of ageing the most. We do propose that this emergent sport, whilst measuring the skill and endeavors of individuals, will ultimately segregate into different managing teams. The individual will consume the diet, perform the workout, and enact the processes. But the most successful athletes will necessarily be overseen by a multidisciplinary team of specialists much like the various teams that exist in professional cycling (e.g. Team Ineos) or in Formula 1 (Team McClaren). This should be intuitive. It would be exceptionally difficult for one person to obtain sufficient knowledge in all the domains of modern medicine, dietetics, strength & conditioning, physiotherapy, biotechnology and stay abreast of the latest developments in all of these fields.
We aim to participate in this emergent sport in the true spirit of competition and good sportsmanship. We are initially iterating on our own team members and aim to show with good evidence that we can slow ageing in our cohort. This website aims to document our progress and process.