Or is it too much and more likely to take from you? I wonder if the fitness benefits or offset by so much stress on joints.

I'd expect your lungs, cardiovascular system and bones to contribute much more to your life expectancy than your joints. And all of those benefit from stress (if given sufficient recovery periods, especially for the bones).

It obviously depends on intensity, and is sometimes described as reverse J-curve[1] relationship. Moderate exercise helps, while intense exercise diminishes these benefits and might also increase mortality risk.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32848273/

Leonid Boguslavsky started triathlon at 62 and had two femoral neck fractures because of it. He's now 74. I think he also has a knee prosthesis now.

Full triathlon distance has nothing to do with health.

As long as you’re training responsibly your body adapts and builds a ‘base’ over time.

This makes you much more resilient not less.

Along these lines I wonder how many people have been able to do triathlons for multiple decades (started in their 20s and still doing in 60s). This impressive woman started late and wondering if that gave her an advantage relative to joint stress...i.e. if you only get so many years

Just program for joint health and reasonable level of functionality, many serious lifters do get hurt and deals with sysemtatic pains for pushing too hard. There's a reason ISS strength training program to prevent musclular atrophy and bone loss are stupid light, something like bodyweight deadlift for 20 reps.

The Oct-2025 National Geographic has an an article entitled How to age like an athlete. It has stories like that of Nora Langdon, 82 YO woman, that started powerlifting in her 60s. She set personal records in her 70s of 203lbs bench press, 381lbs dead lift, and 413lbs squat. Heavy exercise doesn’t appear to have negatively impacted lifespan in her or others in the article.

For a woman of 80 in 2025 you can already say it is making no real difference in terms of statistical outcome so it's at least not obviously taking from her.

She is a little older than her cohort life expectancy at birth (which was 78 in the USA in 1945):

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/TR/2011/lr5a4.html

Assessed in 2010 at the age of 65 she might be expected to live to 85. That seems quite likely.

If anything you would have to say it leans towards extending her life because she will not be eating less like elderly people do, she is likely to have excellent venous health, her reaction times must be good, and prosaically she's so physically fit that just that much more likely not to be derailed by a fall. Living at her age starts to be a question of intent but there are loads of really small things that can trigger decline; she is robust against many of them.

What a remarkable woman.