Youngest and Oldest Olympic Athletes by Sport at Paris 2024

Key figures

• The oldest athletes at Paris 2024 were in equestrian, where the oldest competitor was about 70 on the chart and the youngest about 21.
• Shooting and table tennis each had an athlete aged about 61.
• Skateboarding had both the youngest athlete of the Games, about 12, and an oldest competitor of about 51.
• The oldest athlete in rhythmic gymnastics and in BMX freestyle was about 30 or 31, the lowest maximums on the chart.

All ages are read from the dot positions on the graphic, which has no data labels. The creator’s article says the data is a Kaggle dataset of athletes at the 2024 Olympics [1].

Youngest and oldest Olympic athlete per sport, in text

Title: Youngest and oldest Olympic athlete per sport (Paris 2024). It is a dumbbell chart: for each of 45 sports a purple dot marks the youngest athlete and a green dot the oldest, joined by a grey line, on an axis labelled “Age” from 10 to 70. Sports are sorted by the age of the youngest athlete. Watermark: artfish.ai.

The chart prints no numbers, so the ages below are our readings of each dot, rounded to the nearest year (accurate to within about half a year).

Oldest Olympic athletes at Paris 2024

Yennie Jun, who made the chart, found that the 20 oldest athletes at the Games were aged 55 to 69 and that 80% of them competed in equestrian events, with table tennis and shooting making up the rest [1]. The oldest of all was Australia’s Mary Hanna, an equestrian rider aged 69 [1]. At the other end, the 20 youngest athletes were aged 11 to 14 and 60% of them were skateboarders; the youngest was China’s Zheng Haohao, who competed in skateboarding aged 11 [1].

Her article also notes that rhythmic gymnastics and BMX freestyle are made up of younger athletes, with barely anyone over 30, which matches the short lines for those sports on the chart [1]. She adds that the chart shows only the two extremes in each sport and not the full spread of ages [1].

Oldest Olympians on record

Paris 2024’s oldest athlete was not the oldest in Olympic history. Sweden’s Oscar Swahn, a shooter, competed at the 1920 Summer Olympics aged 72 and still holds the records for the oldest Olympian at the time of competition, the oldest gold medallist (at 64 years and 258 days) and the oldest medallist [2]. Olympedia’s age records list Greece’s Dimitrios Loundras, a gymnast at Athens in 1896 aged 10 years and 216 days, as the youngest competitor [3].

Notes on this infographic

• Youngest age. The skateboarding dot sits at about 12, while the creator’s article and Wikipedia give Zheng Haohao’s age as 11 at the Games [1] [4]. The dot may reflect age by birth year rather than exact date.
• Estimated values. Ages in the table are measured from the dot positions against the axis, not printed figures.
• Data date. Athletes at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics. Sport names are as printed; cycling is split into five rows and basketball into basketball and 3×3 basketball.

Questions about the oldest Olympic athletes

How old are Olympic athletes?

At Paris 2024 they ranged from about 11 or 12 to 69. On this chart the youngest athlete in most sports was between about 14 and 22, and the oldest in most sports was between about 35 and 45 [1].

What Olympic sport has the oldest athletes?

Equestrian. At Paris 2024 it had the oldest athlete, Mary Hanna at 69, and 80% of the 20 oldest competitors [1]. Shooting and table tennis come next on the chart, each with an athlete aged about 61.

Who is the oldest Olympic athlete?

The oldest athlete at Paris 2024 was Mary Hanna, aged 69 [1]. The oldest in Olympic history is Oscar Swahn, who competed in shooting at the 1920 Games aged 72 [2].

Sources

1. Yennie Jun, Visualizing Data from the 2024 Paris Olympics, Part 1, Art Fish Intelligence, 7 August 2024. The creator’s article for this chart.
2. Wikipedia, Oscar Swahn.
3. Olympedia, Age records.
4. Wikipedia, Zheng Haohao.

Last reviewed 30 October 2026