Record-breaking round-the-world voyage for 70-year-old
In an extreme case of a nice elderly lady wandering away from home, 70-year-old Jeanne Socrates has become the oldest woman to sail around the world, solo, without stopping. The grandmother from Ealing, west London, completed her circumnavigation last week, when she docked her 38-foot yacht Nereida back in Victoria, B.C., after 259 days...
Fauja Singh: don’t want to look, can’t turn away
When you’re, say, 50, it’s easy to feel like you’re dull. Uninteresting. You can feel invisible. So when you find something that puts you in high relief, that gives you an identity—especially if you excel at it and it demonstrates what a complete badass you are—you’re going to hold on to it. No. More...
You don’t want anything for Christmas
Young people hate old people for many reasons, most of them justifiable. This time of year they hate us because there is no obvious gift for us. We have most of what we want. What we don’t have we can live without. If we are going to get something more, we very particular about what...
“Ageless athlete” profiles: inspiring or just sort of irritating?
You have emotions that arise so naturally, so spontaneously that they seem pure and unassailable and right. Justified. Nothing to be ashamed of. But life is rarely that clean and neat for very long. Sometimes emotions are strong and automatic and still you suspect that they are, well, suspect. You’re confused by how you feel,...
More Fauja-mania!
We are carrying a bit of a torch for Fauja Singh, the Punjab-born, 101-year-old marathoner and ginger curry aficionado. And on Sunday, he carried one for us. Dressed in white, surrounded by a cheering throng of his fellow Sikhs and other admirers, Singh bore the Olympic flame along a section of the torch’s route through...
Marco Olmo is to the Alps what Caballo Blanco was to the Copper Canyon
Writing about the real and perceived risks of long-distance running for old people, we were reminded of the triumphs of Marco Olmo, the 60-year-old Italian excavator operator who won the grueling, 166-km (with 9,400 meters of climbing) Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc. Actually, he won it twice, in 2006 and 2007. He’s well known in Europe...
You’re over 50, you’re outdoors, and it’s Friday
Old people have occult skills for opening bottles of beer. Chalk it up to experience, cunning, and a stubborn insistence on opening that bottle of beer dammit even when there isn’t a reasonable tool at hand. But they are too worldly to use the tricks of younger folk. They don’t use their teeth; they know...
Dietary secrets of centenarian athletes
Recent posts mentioned paraglidingPeggy McAlpine (104) and marathoner Fauja Singh (101). Our centenarian coverage inadvertently omitted recognition of the 100th birthday of “Pocket Hercules” Manohar Aich, the 4’11” body builder who was India’s first Mr. Universe. Aich no longer lifts weights, since he had a minor stroke last year. (Which, yes, suggests he was lifting...
104-year-old sets paragliding record
It’s been a good few weeks for achievements by people who are so old that—typically—each new breath would be considered something of a triumph . Fauja Singh finished the London Marathon in late April; he is 101. A week or so earlier, Peggy McAlpine reclaimed the record for the oldest person to take part in a...
101-year-old Fauja Singh finishes London Marathon
Fauja Singh has (again) broken the record for the oldest person to finish a marathon. The BBC reports that the 101-year-old Londoner (and proponent of ginger curry) posted a time of 7 hours and 49 minutes. That’s about a half-hour faster than his time at the 2011 Toronto Marathon, where he set the previous record...
Century-old Frenchman (with the body of a 75-year-old) sets biking record
There are many, many things to say about this, and there is nothing that is necessary beyond the following: at the age of 100, Robert Marchand—citizen of France, former inhabitant of Venezuela and former Canadian lumberjack—has just ridden a bike 15.1 miles. In an hour. That sets a new record because it...
Stubborn old sailor won’t admit defeat
If it is true that a sailor’s survival often depends on iron resolve, and if it is true that old men are inherently stubborn, then no one should be surprised by 84-year-old Tom Corogin. Last month, the Ohio native was rescued from the vast, empty Pacific after “broken rigging...
