Robert Parish Quotes

Getting past 30 as a sportsman, the end could be just around the corner.

Every athlete, I think, would like to play forever. They never want to acknowledge that they've lost a step or they can't quite do what they did before.

I think there's nothing sadder than a pro athlete who plays past his prime.

You don't dominate any sport when you're over 40.

As a running back, when you get the ball year after year - and I would say three years on the short end and seven on the long side - you reach a point where it seems like overnight, your body changes and you can't do what you used to do anymore. We see those drastic declines more at running back than any other position.

To say a player is past it at 29, 30 isn't right.

Unlike in my young days I'm not able to eat, drink and sleep tennis.

Like I said, a 30-year-old hockey player, even when I came to New York when I was 30, I was on the downside of my career, pretty much the end of my career.

I'm 56 years old. I like to get out on the court. I continue to try to play the best I can. Obviously, I'm nowhere near where I was when half this age. But I can still hit a pretty decent ball.

It ticks me off to hear people say, 'Hey man, at your age you don't look like you're slowing down a bit.' Like, can I just be a football player? Why does the 33 age have to coincide with me when you talking football?

A sort of sadness shall always remain in my mind that I was not allowed to retire while playing, but anyway, it's all a part of life for a sportsman who, while playing, never realises when he should retire, but he starts thinking about it when he is dropped.

I went over a year without playing baseball. At 39, not playing for a year, a year and a half, there were a lot of nights I was saying, 'This is going to be tough.'

As an older lineman, if you start to sit around, you get stiff. You get tired. Things start to set in.

Boxing does not favor boxers over 35 who rely on reflexes.

We start to decline as humans and, particularly, as athletes right around 25 years old. If you're real lucky, you might push that to 27 or 28.

Sometimes guys peak early. They get drafted higher, and they make it to the NFL, and they don't have a lot of growth.

Some fighters had blinding speed and reflexes in their heyday but faded badly with age.

I've had moments where I realize my body isn't going to withstand many more seasons, but I am very satisfied with my career and I am trying not to look at retirement as a sad thing.

I retired from rugby because I was old and getting really slow.

I just never subscribed to the theory that at age 55, you fall off the face of the earth on the Tour. I always felt that was too young of an age for that.

In sports... you play from the time you're eight years old, and then you're done forever.

I've been running a full marathon every year for more than 20 years, and my record is getting worse. Getting older, getting worse. It's natural.

Played tennis for years. But you can't improve at tennis after you're 50. You get to be in your 40s, and suddenly you're a doubles player.

You never know how long a player has left, especially with strikers. Once you turn 30, as a striker, you are usually on the way down, and playing from the age of 16, at such a high level, has to take its toll.

In track years... track is not like other sports. You do have track athletes that stay in this sport until, like, 35, 36, but I think when you get to 28, it's really difficult.