An investigation into the longevity of Cambridge sportsmen

Abstract

The longevity of 834 Cambridge University sportsmen has been investigated and information about 772 has been obtained. As controls, 761 men who were at the University at the same time were chosen and information was obtained about 710 of them. They were made up of a group of intellectuals numbering 374 men and a group of 336 men chosen at random. There was no evidence that the sportsmen died at an earlier age than the group chosen at random; the intellectuals lived longer by a period averaging about 1.5 years, but this small difference might well be due to chance. There was some evidence that the prospects of longevity for the heavily built men was not so good as it was for those more lightly built. No evidence could be adduced from the information available that cardiovascular causes of death were more prominent in the sportsmen or occurred at an earlier age. © 1954, British Medical Journal Publishing Group. All rights reserved.