Still Going Strong
Stories of Senior Citizens still being Active
"Over the Hill to these seniors is not the end, it's just the beginning."
104-year-old British Indian runner
Fauja Singh was still running marathons right up until his
102nd birthday. Now retired, he still holds the record for his
age group in the 100 metres. A frequent marathon participant,
Singh became the first 100-year-old to finish a marathon in
2011, with an 8:11:06 time at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon.
He was also once featured in an Adidas ad campaign, alongside
David Beckham and Muhammad Ali.
A 105-year-old Hidekichi Miyazaki has broken his own world record as
the world's oldest competitive sprinter - and caught the eye of
his hero Usain Bolt in the process. Hidekichi Miyazaki, who goes
by the nickname 'Golden Bolt', finished a 100-metre sprint in
just 42.22 seconds at the Kyoto Masters Athletics Autumn
Competition on Thursday to enter his name into the Guinness Book
of Records. He celebrated with the iconic pose of his favourite
sprinter. The world's fastest man, Jamaican sprinter
Usain Bolt, recognised the feat on Twitter, accompanied by a
picture of the feat. Born on September 22, 1910, Miyazaki still
has hopes of racing against Bolt - and believes his best is
still yet to come.
Ida Keeling 100-Year-Old Finishe 100 Meter Race, Celebrates With Pushups (youtube)
80-year-old Edith Wilma Connor was named the Guinness World Records' "Oldest Living Female Bodybuilder" in 2012, after she competed in the NPC Armburst Pro Gym Warrior Classic Bodybuilding Championship. The Denver, Colorado native, who has a total of sixteen children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, began lifting in her early 60s when she began to feel like her data entry job was making her stagnant. She won first place in the very first competition she entered -- the Grand Masters in Las Vegas -- on her 65th birthday. Connor now works out no less than three times a week and lifts more weight than some men in their 20s.
Ms. Willie Murphy - 77 years old
"I can shovel my own snow. And I can push my car if it gets stuck in the snow... I'm almost 80 years old and I am still living life." Exercise is key to staying healthy. You don't have to be a world-class weight lifter or do one-handed pull ups, she said, just do enough so that "you are moving something and the blood is flowing in your body." 77-year-old and weighing 105 pounds, Ms. Willie Murphy is a Self-taught, self-trained world-class weight lifter. Murphy deadlifted 215 pounds at the WNPF Championships, held Nov. 15 and 16 in Atlanta, and handily won her division in the deadlift competition. She also came home with first-place awards in power curl, bench press, bench press repetitions and the World Natural Powerlifting Federation 2014 Lifter of the Year award, as well as, awards at the WNPF New York State Powerfest competition in Henrietta. In addition to lifting more than twice her weight, Murphy can do one-handed pull-ups, one-handed pushups, fingertip pushups, and the pushups where you put your fingers in diamond formation and press your nose all the way to the floor. Murphy is quick to point out that her strength is all natural. "None of those steroids for me," she said, setting down a barbell.
Chan
Berbary, 68, competes in the 65 to 69-year-old division of the
2010 National Masters Weightlifting Championships in New
York, April 9, 2010.
Stanislaw
Kowalski, 104, set a new European record for his age category, running 100
meters in 32.79 seconds at Poland’s Wroclaw Stadium. He smashed his
previous personal best of 34 seconds. Speaking after the race, he said: “I
feel like I’m in heaven right now.” His words of advice, “It’s healthier
to eat less then it is to eat more.” (youtube)
95-year-old Charles
Eugster sets a new age-group World Record in the indoor 200m - his
age-group is 95 years and over. His new record of 55.48" knocked a massive
2.4" off the previous record, set by American Orville Rogers in March
2013.
Read more about him at
Silver Grey
Sports Club.
W. Valley Weightlifter Sets Bench-Press Record – World Champion at 91 – Sy Perlis (youtube)
54-year-old man
breaks world record for pull-ups
(youtube)
4,321 pull-ups in a 24-hour period
Frenchman Robert Marchand.
To mark his 100th birthday in 2012, French cyclist rode 15.07
miles, setting a new record in the International Cycling Union's
Masters +100 category. The veteran Frenchman, who lived
through both world wars, then bested his own record in
February 2015 by riding 17.76 miles on the cycling track at
Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines in France; clocking in ten percent
faster at 103 than he rode at 100. Then in 2016 set a new world
record Wednesday when he cycled 22.547 kilometers (about 14
miles) in an hour — at the age of 104. He is 1.52 meters
(5-foot) tall and weighs 52 kilograms (115 pounds) — rode from
Bordeaux to Paris, and Paris to Roubaix several times. He also
cycled to Moscow from Paris in 1992. He eats fruits and
vegetables, doesn't smoke, drinks wine only on occasion, goes to
bed at 9 p.m. and exercises every day.
85-year-old
Lew Hollander is the oldest man to have ever finished an
Ironman race. He is also the oldest man to have ever finished an
Ironman World Championship, which he did in Kailua-Kona,
Hawaii at the age of 82.
At 96,
Tao Porchon-Lynch holds the Guinness World Records title
for oldest yoga instructor. And that isn't the first
impressive title she's held. Before entering the yoga
industry, Porchon-Lynch had a storied career in show
business, which included working as a fashion model in her
native India, performing as a cabaret dancer under the
guidance of famed playwright/director Noel Coward, winning a
"Best Legs in Europe" contest, and acting in Hollywood films
like "The Last Time I Saw Paris," alongside Elizabeth
Taylor. All these years later, Porchon-Lynch is still keeping
those legs in shape, teaching an estimated 400 students at
the Westchester Institute of Yoga in New York, which she and
her husband founded in 1982.
74-year-old Japanese equestrian rider
Hiroshi Hoketsu, seen here
on his horse "Whisper" in the Preliminaries for the 2012
Summer Olympics, has competed in the Olympics since 1964.
He was the oldest athlete in both the 2008 and 2012 Olympics,
placing 17th out of 24 competitors in the latter.
73-year-old
Morgan Shepherd made history in 2012 for becoming
the oldest driver in history to compete in a NASCAR sprint
cup series race. He also made history in 2013 for leading
three laps in a race at the Richmond International Raceway.
98-year-old
Artin Elmayan of Argentina is the world's oldest
ranked tennis player. Elmayan still plays three times a week
and says his biggest challenge is finding new partners in
his age bracket.
At 78, Russian swimmer
Ivan Abrosimov still competes as part of
a local winter swimmers' club. Here, he does push-ups on
the bank of the Yenisei River, despite the sub-zero
temperatures in Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, November
23, 2014.
Don Fleming, who played on the
Barrie Flyers from 1956-7, still plays hockey to this day.
Now 88, he is pictured here, competing in a three-day
tournament for players above 80 in Burnaby, British Columbia.
87 year-old Jane Soeten has won gold medals in
both the hammer throw and discus at the National Senior
Olympics. She has also won a bronze medal in javelin at the
event. Now 87-years-old, she plans to return to the games
again in 2015.
Felimina
Rotundo is 100 years old and still works 11 hours a day, six
days a week at a Buffalo, New York, laundromat, and to her that
seems perfectly normal. "I don't believe in retirement,''
Rotundo told TODAY.com. "I believe 65 is too young. If I retired
at 65, what would I have done all these years? I would've gone
crazy! I work because I love people. I want to be around
people." Rotundo works from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. from Monday
through Saturday at College Laundry Shoppe — washing and folding
clothes — something she believes keeps her young. "That's why
you have sick people in the old folks home,'' she said. "They
didn't have enough to do and their mind deteriorated."
Rotundo, who turned 100 in August, has been
working for 85 years
outside of the time she raised her two children with her late
husband, who was a bartender. "My first job was working at a
shoe factory in Annville, Pennsylvania, when I was 15 years
old,'' she said. "Talk about slave labor. I was making about $10
a week, but I worked my 40 hours and never complained. I was
glad to have a job." She was a teenager during the Great
Depression, which made a strong impact on her work ethic. She
has worked in the Buffalo area for nearly 40 years. "You have
to grow up during the Depression to know what it's like to have
hard times,'' she said. "What are you going to do? You survive.
That's what makes you grow up to work hard and make some money.
It makes you independent and able to say you made it through the
hard times." Rotundo lives three doors down from the
laundromat and spends her time trying to stay busy. "I think
being around a lot of people keeps your mind busy,'' she said.
"I have to take a walk on Sunday in the afternoon with my dog
because I'm not working. I don't spend too much time watching TV
except the news. I read the paper every day because you get so
much more out of the paper." She also hopes that her stamina
at 100 years old can show others the value of the older
population. "I think they throw old people away and forget
about them,'' she said. "Not me. I want to keep working. I think
they should keep old people working as long as they can. If old
people are working and independent, it makes them feel so much
different."
80
Years as a Secretary. Elisabeth Davis, 99, is celebrating an incredible 80 years as a
secretary for Culver Academies in Indiana, where she carries out
her work on her trusty typewriter. When Elisabeth Davis
first got her current job as a secretary at a prep school in
Indiana, she enjoyed it so much that she figured she would stay
awhile. That was in 1936. Davis, 99, has reached an incredible
milestone as she celebrates her 80th year as a secretary at
Culver Academies in Culver, Indiana. Davis, shown during her
days at Culver High School in 1931, started working at Culver
Academies when Franklin D. Roosevelt was the president. Davis
got the job shortly after graduating from Culver High School in
1935, starting off with assisting the dean. She now maintains
all of the faculty information, keeping a hard copy of
everything that she types up on her typewriter. The school has
to order ribbon and any parts from Amazon because of the
scarcity of anything typewriter-related. Davis has become a
living historian of the prep school in Indiana and has no plans
to retire any time soon. "I haven't learned a lot of that, and I
haven't tried to learn it,'' she said. "I figure I won't be here
much longer, I guess." The school has grown from 34 students
when she started to 814 today. The only time Davis wasn't at her
desk was when she took a leave of absence for a few years until
her son and daughter were both in school. She is now a
grandmother of six and a great-grandmother of five. Davis lives
close to the school and gets a ride every day from co-workers.
"They're wonderful,'' she said. "They're very good to me." She
never considered getting a job anywhere else, and retirement
never crossed her mind, either. After her husband of 59 years,
Eldon, died in 2004, the job has helped keep her active. "I just
live day by day,'' she said. "If there comes a time when I feel
like it, I will, but I don't feel like retiring."
New York barber oldest in world at 107
- Anthony Mancinelli is 107-years-old. He lives in Hamlet, which
is east of Binghamton, and he's in the Guinness Book of World
Records. He's a fulltime barber, working 40 hours a week. He has
some advice for being able to live so long, saying, "Well, I
advise a lot of people not to quit working. Keep busy."
Mancinelli started cutting hair at the age of 11. Not only is he
still working fulltime, but he also lives on his own and drives
to work every day!
91 year old Johanna Quaas was certified as the Guinness World
Record holder nearly five years ago, and the world’s oldest
gymnast is still going strong. The 91-year-old German competed
at the International German Gymnastics Festival in Berlin
earlier this month. “My face is old, but my heart is young,”
Quaas said in April, according to the Straits Times. “Maybe the
day I stop doing gymnastics is the day I die.” Quaas first
competed in gymnastics in 1934, then became a coach and a
physical education teacher. She took a number of years off
before returning to training in 1982 after having three
daughters and has since become a great-grandmother, according to
reports. Quaas gained viral fame in 2012, when YouTube videos of
her routines were posted that have since gained some 10 million
views. “My proudest moment so far was when I was 84 years old
and there was no one in my age group competing in the
championships,” Quaas said, according to the Straits Times. “So
they put me with the others in the 70-75 age group and I still
won by one point.”
91-year-old gymnast leaps over competition | DW English
(youtube)
World's
Oldest Gymnast - Meet The Record Breakers - Guinness World
Records (youtube)
65-year-old distance swimmer
Diana Nyad. In August 2013, she became the first person to
swim non-stop from Florida to Cuba without a shark cage;
clocking in approximately 110 miles in 53 hours at 64 years of
age.
John
Maultsby 50th State Marathon (video)
73-Year-Old
Grandfather Completes 50 Marathons In All 50 States
Richard Overton, nation's oldest World War II veteran, dies in
Texas at age 112.
National Senior Olympics
National Senior Games Association
Adventure Racing
Oldest People Alive