If you exercise your resting heart rate will be lower, so athletic people have fewer total heart beats. However I'm not sure number of heart beats is a relevant metric to cardiovascular wear and tear.

yeah, as the other comment noted, I wondered if it was related to that "meme" of total heartbeats. regular exercise reducing total resting heartrate, but excessive exercise overwhelming that gain with excessive stresses and high rates. dunno. just random speculation, I have no expertise in this...