that have enabled so many elder athletes to continue excelling past their expected primes. Perhaps, instead, it’s the coddling of younger generations that’s produced a bevy of mentally weak challengers. It’s not like health improvements have made 35-year-old athletes more physically fit than their 20-year-old counterparts. And it’s not like experience was irrelevant in previous generations. Which leaves the way kids used to be mentally cultivated versus how they are today (and there is absolutely a difference – we once widely beat our kids) as the explanatory factor.