All men are born equal. This was said by some geezer with a social conscience with the underlying aim to keep people equal for the rest of their lives. Someone then added a second line but some are more equal than others. This was of course political irony. In the world of sport, however, this is absolutely true, men are most definitely not born equal.Coming up to the World Indoor Rowing Championships in Boston the old chestnut of the veteran age bands will once again rear its ugly head. In recognition of the fact that performance declines with age, many sports have age categories and some try to apply a handicap system. Every system will have its critics and questions about its fairness, so what are the issues?What is a fact is that performance will decline from a peak as a consequence of the ageing process. There is even a figure of 0.4ml/kg/min/year decrease in VO2 max. This won't mean a lot to most people so I will give an example.Take a man aged 25 who is at the peak of his powers, weighs 80 kilograms and has a VO2 maximum of 6 litres/min. If his weight remains the same and he continues to train, then at age 50 his VO2 max will have dropped to 5 litres/min. If at his peak his 2,000 metre best is 6 minutes, on his 50th birthday he would be looking at around 6:40. So it's not too complicated to convert the physiological changes into a corrected time for 2,000 metres.When identifying different groups, statisticians look for a clear gap from one group to another, but when we look at the results of BIRC, this gap does not exist.Taking the Men's Open Hwt as the starting point, there were 116 competitors in this category and if we compare the winners of the different categories this is what we find:30-39 winner 5th overall40-44 winner 13th overall45-49 winner 27th overall50-54 winner 18th overall55-59 winner 58th overall60-64 winner 78th overall65-69 winner 105th overall70-79 winner 114th overallThis list illustrates two main points. First it confirms that age affects performance, but it also shows us that age is not the only criteria, as 70 year old Mike Collier beat three blokes under thirty.When you train with the aim to perform, you develop your skill, mental toughness and physical capability. In this last area, the extent to which we can develop our physical capacity is determined at birth, or before to be exact, as it is a question of genetics.Andy Ripley, who at 52 won the 50-55 category and would have come 18th in the Men's Open Hwt, was born with a tremendous physical capacity. Allowing for the loss of potential from ageing, he still has a greater VO2 max than the average 25 year old.The perfect handicap system requires everyone to be born equal and we know this doesn't happen. So the next time you think about complaining, don't have a go at the organisers, blame your parents.