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In December 2023, Ronnie O'Sullivan won the 2023 UK Championship in snooker, and in doing so he became both the youngest winner of the championship - in 1993 at 17y 358d - and the oldest winner at 47y 363d.

Are there any other instances of this across the wide world of sport, where a competitor is both the youngest and oldest winner of a competition at the same time?

To keep this from being too broad, I'll keep this to "major competitions" in their respective sports eg Champions League / World Cup in football, a Grand Slam event in Tennis, a Major event in Golf, Olympic events etc etc.

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    Must the competitor remain the youngest champion when they become the oldest? For example, when he won his first Masters, Jack Nicklaus was the youngest to do so. When he won his last, he became the oldest to do so (and remains so). However, before Nicklaus became the oldest champion, Seve Ballesteros became the youngest (and others have since taken that distinction).
    – GreenMatt
    Commented Dec 12, 2023 at 21:58
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    @GreenMatt - I think for the sake of this particular question they would need to be both at the same time - at least that's the situation with O'Sullivan which prompted the question initially.
    – ImClarky
    Commented Dec 13, 2023 at 15:19
  • At least until next year, Alberto Ginés López is both the youngest and oldest winner of the men's Olympic sport climbing event.
    – Philip Kendall
    Commented Dec 13, 2023 at 17:41

2 Answers 2

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Technically the answer is "everything", because the first time a major competition is run the winner is simultaneously the youngest and oldest person to ever win it!

But if we're going to rule out that there's still at least one additional case:

W Series - The all-female motorsport championship ran for a total of three seasons (2019-2022) and all three were won by Jamie Chadwick so she was the youngest winner in 2019 and the eldest in 2022

I think Birgit Fischer counts too - having won Olympic canoeing gold medals at 18 and 42

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The 50 m freestyle has the youngest and oldest gold medalist - Anthony Ervin as a 19 year old in 2000 and a 35 year old in 2016.

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