After winning six world titles before 1989, Steve Davis has done practically nothing in the sport since, while expanding his horizons into chess, poker and television commentary on snooker.
Some people, like volcanoes, can have their talent lay dormant for years until some unexplained moment when their skill and experience erupt into a new event.
As with Mr Davis, Brian Close played for England at cricket in 1949, the youngest to do so, and was still facing the bowling in 1976 against the then might of the West Indies.
Diana Athill wrote a novel and a collection of short stories in the 1960s, while working as an editor at André Deutsch, but her true flowering as an author of note only came with a autobiography called Stet written well into her 80s. She is still writing, even as she moves into a care home.
Mary Wesley famously churned out unpublished novels up until her 70th year when finally her public career was launched with a bestseller. Thereafter she wrote a novel a year to huge readerships for the next two decades.
Igor Stravinsky met Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky as a youngster, composed The Firebird at 28 in 1910, and carried on creating until completing his Requiem Canticles in 1966, at the age of 85.
Pablo Picasso kept painting through his various periods from the beginning of his career as a young cubist until the end of his long life in 1973.
What keep the critics occupied is comparing talented people against their own skill at various points in their lives. The greatest geniuses may be those people who expertise is equally celebrated at all points of the lives.
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