A 69-year-old longevity scientist is stepping onto a competition floor in Manhattan to put his body to the test. Eric Verdin, president and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, is one of the competitors at the inaugural Super Age Games, an event built around eight physical and cognitive trials designed to produce a single age score for each participant.
The Games were scheduled for Saturday at The Armory Track in Washington Heights, according to the Super Age Games event page, and Verdin's participation was detailed by the Buck Institute, which described him taking his commitment to healthy aging onto the competition floor at the first-ever event.
The competition was created by Super Age, a longevity-focused media company, working alongside the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. Founder David Stewart said the Games are meant to build community and encourage lasting health changes, per the Chronicle's reporting.
Eight Trials, One Composite Score
Eight Trials, One Composite Score The event features eight trials across physical strength, cardiovascular fitness, balance, cognition and social skills, according to the Buck Institute. One trial, known as the Hang, tests grip strength through a dead hang from a bar, while an obstacle course requires competitors to crawl over and under barriers to test agility and movement, per the Chronicle's account.
Balance gets its own trial too: competitors walk forward and then backward across a 12-foot low beam while carrying a water-filled tube, according to Super Age. Another trial called the Sync tests relational intelligence and social capacity, according to the Buck Institute; the event page describes testing “working memory under physical stress, and your relational capacity in real time.” A bike-based trial estimates aerobic capacity using power output rather than a laboratory oxygen-consumption test, Yahoo Sports reported.
Each event receives an individual score, and those results feed into an overall age score for every participant, the Chronicle reported.
Who's Actually Competing
Who's Actually Competing The Games are designed for people across varied fitness backgrounds, and entry costs $399. Participants must be 18 or older.
A ticket listing from the Super Age ticket shop put registration at 960 founding athletes ranging from age 29 to 80.
What the Score Can and Can't Tell You
The Buck Institute is careful to frame the resulting number as a snapshot rather than a diagnosis. “That score is an estimate, rather than a precise measure of biological age or a prediction of how long someone will live,” the institute said in its announcement. Yahoo Sports reported that the publicly available trial explanation does not include a published validation study demonstrating that the overall score accurately measures biological age.
Participants receive preliminary results during the event itself, with a full Super Age Healthspan Assessment delivered within seven days, according to the event page. Some of the trials draw on published research: Super Age cites a 2022 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine finding that an inability to hold a 10-second single-leg stance was linked to an 84% higher all-cause mortality risk over seven to 10 years, and points to the PURE study, which tracked 139,691 participants across 17 countries and found grip strength was a stronger predictor of mortality than systolic blood pressure.
A comparable effort already exists for older athletes: the National Senior Games Association's Sustained Athlete Fitness Exam, or SAFE, evaluates competitors across cardiovascular fitness, muscular power and strength, flexibility and mobility, and balance and agility, benchmarking scores against research for an athlete's sex and five-year age bracket, according to the National Senior Games Association. The association says SAFE draws on more than a decade of performance metrics. A study of 4,600 Senior Games athletes found their fitness levels comparable to average people 10 to 20 or more years younger, the association reported.
