Muhammad Ali delayed it. Michael Jordan initially couldn’t handle it. Michael Phelps came out of it. Tom Brady for years avoided it. Retirement is a truth athletes naturally refuse to surrender to. Their conditioning is to persist, their instinct is to resist, their training is to avoid any version of quit.
Retirement is an ending and people resent it even in their 60s. It’s human to defy the idea that talent is fraying. Athletes can be in their 20s, often still taut and tested, when we start tittering about their departure. They can be very fast. Just not fast enough.
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