Have you ever heard of a sport where the score is good health and getting young? Known as the Longetivity World Cup, it introduces a new perspective in the world of sports. As they clearly state on their official site, you don’t get older in the Longevity World Cup, you get younger. Reverse your age and rise on the leaderboard! While other athletes compete through jumping and running, longevity athletes strive to score better biomarkers and lower their age.
In every season, each athlete undergoes lab tests to determine their scores on phenotypic age vs chronological age.
What’s the Longevity World Cup?
This is an anti-aging sport that was launched in 2024/2025. It’s basically a biohacking competition that showcases the abilities of longevity athletes. Unlike other sports, the goal of this competition is health optimization and reversing aging. What’s more, it’s a measurable and dynamic competition. To determine the scores, participants must visit specific labs within a specific time frame for lab tests and share their biomarker. Through aging biomarkers, the review board will determine the score of each longevity athlete each season.
How Athletes Compete to Reverse Aging
At the heart of this anti-aging competition is the tracking of specific health biomarkers for a given period of time. Dr. Oliver Zolman, a medical doctor, healthcare consultant, and founder of 20one Consulting, established the first longevity leaderboards that leverage the biomarkers. On these boards, both people and animals competed with each other to see who could get the best biological aging clocks.
As a participant of the Longevity World Cup, you are required to publicly share biomarker evidence, adhering to a 15-point statistical algorithm known as the Zolman Biological Age Marker (Z-BAM) criteria. These leaderboards are carefully verified by third parties to prevent data manipulation and maintain scientific credibility.
As an athlete, you’ll take blood tests periodically, typically annually. Each new result then gets compared to the previous one. For example, a drop in the PhenoAge score compared to the previous year earns you points for successful age reduction. The site will automatically calculate age reduction and update the leaderboard. In summary, competitors compete to make themselves biologically younger.
Motivation and Prizes
To boost athlete and fan morale, the competition includes fun and engaging activities. For instance, fans get to estimate the age of the athletes as a community to see who gets it right. While the competition is based on science, this creates a playful atmosphere for everyone.
Like any other global sports competition, there are prizes for the winners. Yes, you heard that right. When you participate, you get an opportunity to win a share of the prize pool, in form of cryptocurrency. The organizers have clearly stated that besides the prize and future sponsorship, there are no hidden costs.
The Science Behind It
The Longevity World Cup is purely based on science and research. Therefore, it’s a great contribution to the science community. Like modern science, this anti-aging sport views age as a measurable biological process that can be influenced. Through decades of scientific research, biomarkers such as blood tests, DNA methylation patterns, telomere length, etc., have been known to correlate with aging and mortality.
The concept of biological age is key in this case. That’s because you might be 50 years old by birthdate, but your blood markers may suggest you are biologically younger, let’s say 40. In some cases, you may be older, for instance, 55 when you are 50 in actual sense. Importantly, research shows that improving these biomarkers tends to reduce your susceptibility to diseases.
The whole competition is based on science. For example, PhenoAge was developed by analyzing large datasets including blood and health outcomes, and optimizing a formula so that its age measuremenrs predict lifespan. By using PhenoAge or similar clocks, in this competition, longevity athletes are effectively measuring whether their diets, workouts, or supplements are having a real impact on aging.
With the help of the Zolman Leaderboard developed by Dr. Oliver Zolman, the athletes’ biomarkers are tabulated and calculated using its algorithm to determine their scores. To ensure there is no manipulation of data by participants, the leaderboard is scrutinized thoroughly by third parties. As such, every score and result you see on it is scientifically credible.
During the competition, the aim of the athletes is to improve their DunedinPACE scores, which aim to measure a person’s pace of aging. Two leaderboards by Dr. Zolman were launched to help with this: a relative one and an absolute one.
In the relative scoreboard, scores were dependent on how much someone improved from their starting point. In the absolute leaderboard, the absolute speed of aging reversal compared to chronological age was counted.
Why it Matters for Health Enthusiasts
As mentioned earlier, the Longevity World Cup goes beyond the confines of ordinary sports. It’s based on science; as such, it’s a worthy contribution to the science community. Therefore, if you are a science fanatic or a scientist, this sport offers a fresh perspective and motivation worth looking at. Some of the contributions it brings along include:
Education
As a participant, you can learn about biomarkers that you never knew existed. Doctors and biohackers on the leaderboard often explain what diet/exercise changes influenced their results. This demystifies aging biology for everyone involved.
Accountability & Progress
Like any fitness challenge, public leaderboards and the promise of prizes give extra drive to stick with healthy habits. Reducing your age a bit every month, on the other hand, is a clear goal.
Innovation Testing
Some competitors experiment with cutting-edge therapies such as supplements and young blood plasma infusions under medical supervision. In this way, they help determine which methods work and those that don’t. As a result, scientists get enough data to identify elements that influence one’s age to either increase or decrease.
Final Remarks
From this piece of information, the Longevity World Cup is more than just a sport. It’s a new take on the science of aging. With every success in each season, we are a step closer to determining how to reverse our age and remain younger. Of course, the sport is still young, with only a few people around the world aware of it.
Even so, it’s gradually catching on. As it continues to advance, we will be seeing more celebration of personal best times. In that sense, longevity competition might as well become the next big global sport, one where the ultimate victory is simply living longer and healthier.
But who can participate? Well, you can be part of this journey in a couple of ways. For starters, you can contribute financially through crowdfunding. Secondly, you can take part in the longevity challenge.
For frequent updates on the progress of this sport, visit their official site and sign up. You can also subscribe to their YouTube channel or follow them on X (Twitter) to be part of the journey.
