I've heard that usually peak performance for men is 33 but you can probably mitigate age related issues by training, sleeping and eating well, with some limitation, of course, as an example it'll be hard to see a 50 years old compete with a 25 who's in shape and practicing often.
33 is a peak for a regular men. Professional athletes have their peak lower (for example at artistic gymnastics athletes professional athletes retire at 17-19y.o), because they always put their body on the limit, their body exhaust more. If they were machines, then they have huge mileage. Like taxi cars breaks or die faster than regular cars Why football players retire early - probably due to muscles structure, flexibility, body recovery phases and etc.
But in sports in which your skill matters way more I would expect for athletes to last for way longer than that, as even if they are not as fast or as strong as before, they can make do and still compete due to their superior skills.
this again is a comparison of humans with machines
machines break if they're used too much
humans can recover, rest, have ways to prolong their practice even at a really high performance level
that's the point
and yes, there's also skill as you mentioned
cool world