CYCLIST VS TYCOON - THE ANTI-AGEING FACE-OFF

Bemused by the extravagant anti-ageing regimen of a tech tycoon, David Bradford assesses the youth-preserving potential of the humble bicycle

- David Bradford

Over the past few months, it has been hard to avoid media coverage about the US tech centi-millionaire Bryan Johnson and his quest to defy the ageing process. Hardly a news outlet in the land – not even Auntie Beeb herself – has turned down the chance to feed Johnson’s apparently insatiable appetite for publicity. Most of the headlines allude to his $2m-a-year anti-ageing budget, or the fact he was injecting himself with the blood plasma of his 17-year-old son – a vampiric practice he has since ditched, admitting it didn’t work. Among his many audacious claims, the wealthy 46-year-old purports to have slowed his pace of ageing by 31 years – but it was his boast about having a VO2 max of 58.7ml/kg/min that raised my eyebrow highest.

In fairness to Johnson, a VO2 max in the high-50s is very respectable for a man in his mid-40s, but his claim that this measurement puts him in the “top 1.5% of 18-year-olds” says a lot more about the sedentariness of the teenagers to whom he’s comparing than it does about his own peak oxygen uptake. What’s more, I knew from experience that plenty of competitive veteran cyclists of similar age to Johnson have VO2 max numbers that would make his 58 look positively geriatric. Which sparked a hypothesis in my mind: if cycling maintains cardiovascular performance more effectively than a $2m-a-year antiageing regime, maybe a bike is the only rejuvenation tool any of us really need.