With great power comes… a list of great athletes who exude it. Sports Illustrated's 2025 Power List features trailblazers and icons who are dominating the sports landscape and shaping their own inimitable legacies as some of the most “powerful” sports figures to walk the earth. There’s power in its physical definition of pounds of muscle and brute force, power as cultural influence and social impact that comes from being the best at your game, power as a superhuman ability to bend the limits and accomplish what was previously thought to be impossible.
From the gridiron to the hockey rink, from packed stadiums to crowded ballparks, these rookies and veterans are living proof that there’s more than one way to flex your power. Here are the youngest and oldest athletes who made the list.
Youngest: Lamine Yamal, 18 years old
Blink, and you’ll miss him: a dash of red-and-blue streaking down the sidelines, shifting and darting through defenders and looking an awful lot like the No. 10 who came before him. At just 18 years old, Lamine Yamal already boasts the resume of a footballer who’s a decade older, as he owns multiple La Liga titles with Barcelona, a Euros championship with Spain, and a stunningly long list of individual honors and records that stand alone in history.
Upon first glance, there’s nothing particularly powerful about the teenage soccer sensation, whose skinny frame doesn’t exactly scream world-class goalscorer or future Ballon d’Or winner. Yet the moment he touches a ball, everything changes.
Defenders immediately collapse to try to stop him, his teammates flock him awaiting his next crafty move, and everyone’s eyes are glued to the wunderkind from Catalonia knowing that he just might do something extraordinary (like his magical Champions League goal against Inter Milan, say).
Yamal soared to global recognition in his Euros debut for Spain last summer, when he broke Pelé’s record to become the youngest player in history to play in the tournament’s final (he finished with one goal and four assists in the Euros). Fresh off his first big national team title, Yamal is primed to lead La Rojas into their next golden era at the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Nearly every soccer fan on the planet knows his name by now, and his career is just getting started. That’s power in a nutshell—or rather, in the body of a 5' 11" bona fide soccer phenom.
Oldest: Kayla Harrison, 35 years old
The life story of Kayla Harrison is one of toughness and resilience, as the 35-year-old female fighter relentlessly battled through adversity to become the powerful icon she is now.
A two-time Olympic gold medalist and UFC bantamweight champion, Harrison channeled her inner strength in every competition on the mat from her humble beginnings in judo to her successful transition to MMA (mixed martial arts). At 16 years old, she found the courage to speak up after being sexually abused by her judo coach for years. From that hardship, she was able to forge greatness, and she became the first American (man or woman) to win a gold medal in the sport of judo at the 2012 London Games. Her awe-inspiring endurance never wavered, not even when she entered the cage in MMA and fought her way to two Professional Fighters League (PFL) world championships and, most recently, a UFC championship.
Harrison now stands in all her glory as one of the best fighters in the world—and at the same time embodies so much more. She’s a mother of two. A fearless leader of a foundation that empowers sexual abuse victims and survivors. It takes a true warrior to be able to get back up, over and over again. Throughout the course of Harrison’s dogged and decorated fighting career, she became the very definition of one.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Youngest & Oldest Athletes Who Made SI's Power List.
