Universal collapse and sex-dependent scaling laws in human performance and aging

Human performance declines with age, yet whether this process follows universal scaling laws across heterogeneous populations remains unclear. Here, using tools from statistical physics, we analyze marathon finish times from over half a million participants across four World Marathon Majors as a large-scale empirical realization of a complex human system. Combining allometric scaling with a Gaussian aging model, and rescaling performance by city- and sex-specific parameters, we observe a universal collapse of aging trajectories onto a single master curve, revealing universal aging dynamics largely independent of geography or culture. Males exhibit systematically steeper allometric decay than females, whereas the age of peak performance varies geographically but remains sex-independent, suggesting environmental rather than intrinsic biological control of optimal timing. These findings position human endurance performance as a population-scale laboratory for investigating universality, scaling, and emergent structure under physiological constraints, bridging statistical physics and aging dynamics.