Figure 2.

Ageing effects on performance. Shown are partial residuals as function of age (years) in decathletes (blue) and heptathletes (red), after controlling for year, Julian day, experience and wind assistance. This figure shows that while performance in all arm-based events increases with age (a–c; discus, shot put, and javelin), performance in most leg-based events deceases with age (e–l; high jump, long jump, 100 m, 200 m, 400 m, and 1500 m). Lines are provided only if 95% credible intervals for the age effect did not overlap with zero (see electronic supplementary material, table S1 for estimates from the linear mixed-effect models). Times for running events were multiplied by −1 such that larger values indicate better performance and all traits were standardized (mean = 0, variance = 1).