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This septuagenarian takes up the centenarian challenge.
Foreign Hand
Training to compete in the Olympics could be every athlete’s dream. But some are now training to achieve an equally challenging milestone—the Centenarian Olympics. Unlike the Summer, Winter or Para-Olympics that are held every four years, the Centenarian Olympics has no fixed date. It is a milestone reached by individuals. Since living to be a 100 is not a given, a new concept about training for one’s own milestone of a century is becoming a popular trend among people over 50 in the US and Canada.
Susan Winder, 57, is training for 2062—the year of her own Centenarian Olympics. When that year comes, she still wants to travel, garden, play with her great-grandchildren and move around comfortably. These are things she does now. But she’s getting fit to make sure she can still do them in 43 years. “I walk two to five miles every day. I do some strength training and flexibility work,” Wilder, CEO and founder of a family medicine practice in Arizona, US, told BBC. “Every choice I’m making I’m thinking about things that work in my favour. It’s about self-preservation.” When just surviving for a century is a worthy goal for most, others like Susan have set themselves targets for when they reach 100: staying healthy, active and able.
Peter Attia, a 47-year-old Canadian-American surgeon with a medical practice focused on longevity and an aspiring centenarian, said he came up with the idea during the funeral of a friend’s parent, who was unable to do the things he loved, like golf and gardening, in his final years.
“We’re sitting there at the funeral, and I don’t know, I’m just thinking there’s got to be a way to stop this,” he told a podcast. “We do all this amazing training for athletes who are trying to go to the Olympics…but why aren’t we training to be kick-ass 90-year-olds?”
Attia listed 18 things he wanted to do when he turned 100: everyday tasks like carrying groceries up flights of stairs, putting a suitcase in an overhead bin and getting off the floor with a single point of support—all challenges for a century-old body. That’s why he wants to start practising now.
Unlike the quest for gold in Olympics, one’s Centenarian Olympics are different: they’re a personal competition against the body’s natural decline. What can be a better prize when you are still living your best life, even after a century?
