Latest news with #mastersathletics
Free Malaysia Today
3 days ago
- Sport
- Free Malaysia Today
Goodbye, ‘Turbo Grandpa' – you ran so we'd all believe
L Pushpanathan powers to 400m gold in the 90–94 age group at the 2019 Malaysian Open Masters in Kuala Lumpur. (L Pushpanathan pic) IPOH : Pushpanathan Letchmanan, Malaysia's 'Turbo Grandpa' and oldest competitive sprinter, has died at 95. He leaves a trail of unforgettable races that lit up the track and our hearts. In race after race, year after year, he defied age, inspired generations, and reminded us that growing older doesn't mean slowing down. He died on Wednesday night at Ipoh General Hospital, a day after a fall at home. It was a life lived in full stride, a masterclass in defying age, inspiring others, and showing that movement is as much about spirit as it is about the body. Pushpanathan wasn't just Malaysia's fastest nonagenarian. He was a symbol of what it means to live fully, without surrendering to the limits that age or society tries to set. 'Running stays till my last breath,' he once said. And he meant it. Even in his 90s, he was still outrunning younger competitors. Cheered on by the crowd, Turbo Grandpa L Pushpanathan ran with joy in his heart and fire in his feet. (Vickram Ragunath pic) At 93, he clocked 32.4 seconds in the 100m, finishing fourth in a category for men aged 75 and above, the only runner over 90, and by far the most captivating. In 2023, he grabbed gold in the 100m in 28.74s ahead of India's Kirpal Singh (45.78s) in 90-94 age group at the Malaysian International Open Masters Athletics Championships in Kuala Lumpur. In the same meeting, he ran the 200m in 88.8s for his second top finish. The joy was in the run Snapshots of a nonagenarian who kept the nation's flag flying high: L Pushpanathan holding the Jalur Gemilang on the podium after a triumphant 100m run in the 2022 Malaysia Masters Open (left), and with India's Kirpal Singh (right) following his 100m win at the 2023 Malaysian International Open Masters Athletics Championships. (Vickram Ragunath pic) A retired English teacher from SM Raja Chulan in Ipoh, Pushpanathan took up competitive masters athletics late in life, debuting at the Malaysian Open Masters in 2018. He won silver in the 400m at his first outing, and continued to rack up medals and admiration in the years that followed. Representing Perak Masters, he wasn't chasing trophies, he was chasing purpose. With his trademark swing of the arms and twinkle in his stride, he made it clear: he wasn't just running. He was showing us how to live. 'In a world that idolises youth, Pushpanathan flipped the script,' said V Pulainthiran, honorary president of Asia Masters Athletics. 'He wasn't just a sprinter. He was proof that life doesn't end after retirement, and a reminder to the young that you can always begin again.' Pulainthiran, also the patron of the Malaysian Masters Athletics Association, added: 'The track was his mirror – it reflected his will, not his wrinkles. That's the image we should carry forward.' Legacy in every lane Crossing the line with youthful might, L Pushpanathan set the tone for a lifetime of relentless running. (L Pushpanathan pic) Pushpanathan's contributions to Malaysian athletics stretched far beyond his own races. He co-founded Swifts Athletics Club in Ipoh with Suppiah Ramalingam, helping shape the careers of athletes like track queen M Rajamani, Malaysia's first Sportswoman of the Year. He also served for over six decades as a technical officer at national and international meets, including the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur. Even when the spotlight dimmed, he kept showing up, driven by love for the sport and the belief that movement is life. At home, he inspired his family. His wife Mangleswary, daughter Shanthi Devi, and two grandchildren, Shalini and Vickram were his biggest fans. 'To him, age was never a burden,' said Vickram. 'It was just another lane on the track, and he ran through it with pride.' A model for active life Proof that age never dulled his drive: L Pushpanathan in the thick of training for the Malaysian Masters in 2022. (Ragunath Veeriah pic) Today, about 7% of Malaysians — roughly 2.3 million people — are aged 65 and above. By 2050, older adults are expected to outnumber those under 15 for the first time in our history. With men living on average to 73 and women to 78, the notion of healthy ageing is becoming more urgent, and more relevant. Pushpanathan's active life until 95 offers not just hope, but a model. His habits were simple: a daily 2km run, alternate-day yoga, light strength training, and a diet rooted in moderation. His mental sharpness and sense of purpose helped sustain a vitality that few achieve. As Malaysia's demographics shift, his story reminds us that seniors can be more than dependents, They can be mentors, leaders, even competitors. Remembering the man who wouldn't stop Pushpanathan's legacy isn't just in the races he ran, it's in the mindsets he changed. He deserves to be remembered in classrooms, in public health campaigns, and in the way we think about ageing. Each time someone says, 'I'm too old for this,' may his memory offer a gentle nudge forward. In the global community of veteran runners, he now stands alongside icons like Japan's Hidekichi Miyazaki and India's Fauja Singh. Pushpanathan joins their ranks not just by age, but by attitude. And what does his life teach us? That consistency matters more than intensity. That joy is its own quiet rebellion. That sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do is simply not stop. The last rites will be held from 11am to 12.30pm today at Six Pearls Funeral Parlour, Jalan Madras, Ipoh, followed by cremation at Buntong Crematorium.
Yahoo
31-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
‘Never think you're too old': Meet the world's fastest 75-year-old woman
Along a sun-dappled canal towpath in picturesque Hertfordshire countryside, a grey-brown bob rises and falls with the effortless bounce of a lithe, spectacled figure gliding her way past dog-walkers and afternoon ramblers. There is a watch – one of those smart-technology devices capable of producing all sorts of unnecessary metrics – on Sarah Roberts's wrist, but she has forgotten to switch it on. Roberts, a grandmother of five, tends not to take note of such things. Advertisement When she does go for a run – an occurrence of surprising infrequency – she prefers to be guided by feel; distances and times forgotten upon return to her front door. The fastest 75-year-old woman in history – a multiple world champion and world-record holder – possesses no training logbook, no coach and, most intriguingly, almost zero running pedigree for most of her life. Asked by the hastily stretching Guardian journalist – foolishly attempting to keep pace for a few miles – how she is capable of launching straight into a run without any semblance of a warm-up, she reveals she only stretches before races 'so that I don't look unprofessional'. Her Great Britain Masters singlet reveals taut muscles and supple limbs that would never have been employed for their current purpose were it not for a holiday to South Africa eight years ago. Trips there had been a frequent occurrence long before a Cape Town-based friend asked whether Roberts and her husband George would like to join their regular Saturday morning parkrun – the wonderful innovation that welcomes all comers to undertake 5km at whatever pace they choose. Sheltered under trees at the foot of Table Mountain, they savoured this one at no more than a pleasurable amble. The following week they went again, only this time Roberts ran small segments. On their return to their Hertfordshire home, the couple decided to sign up to their local parkrun. For three years, almost every Saturday morning involved a 5km run, with Roberts converting from running novice to regular attendee, whittling her time down from just shy of 30 minutes to less than 23. Just a few weeks off her 70th birthday, she then took a plunge by joining her local athletics club, Dacorum, and signing up for an 800m race at the end of the summer. Advertisement 'I was discovering I was really quite good,' she explains after our canal run, while sitting in front of an antique mantel clock in a living room adorned with furnishings from decades gone by. 'That made me think I ought to see whether I could do other things, so I put myself in for an 800. I'd never even been on a track before. The gun went and all I knew is I had to go round twice. 'The only other people in the race were either under-17 or under-15, and then there was me, almost 70. These girls just shot off in the distance looking like gazelles and I ran round. I was way last and didn't know what time I'd done, but someone told me it was rather good for my age.' The Covid pandemic dashed almost all running opportunities over the next two years, aside from irregular parkruns when permitted. So, it was not until early 2022 that she was able to contest another 800m, unexpectedly taking the scalp of a multiple global age-group champion in the process. 'Nobody had heard of me or expected me to do anything,' says Roberts. Advertisement By 2023, she was a double British champion in the 70-74 age group. The following year she won three world titles over 800m, 1500m and 5,000m, before adding four more indoor golds this March. 800m outdoor: 2min 58.12sec 800m indoor: 2.57.32 1,500m outdoor: 6.06.20 1,500m indoor: 5.58.15 Mile outdoor: 6.40.32 3,000m indoor: 12.28.82 5,000m outdoor: 22.40.15 5km road: 21.33 10,000m outdoor: 45.59.81 10km road: 44.33 Since her birthday last October, she has swept the board of 75+ world records over every track distance from 800m to 10,000m indoors and outdoors, as well as 5km and 10km on the road. Last weekend, she added mile and 10,000m world records to her bulging haul despite less than 90 minutes between races. It is a staggering array of accolades for someone whose running experience never previously extended beyond chasing primary school friends around the playground. Upstairs in their smart detached home, off a hallway lined with photos of their children and grandchildren, sits a room that used to function as an office but is now primarily occupied with Roberts' late-blooming running career. Surrounded by cardboard boxes marked with such mundanities as 'sewing', 'Scrabble' and 'wrapping paper' lie an assortment of athletics paraphernalia, from certificates to printed race results, and photo albums to a frankly overwhelming number of medals. Advertisement How much does running now occupy Roberts' life, I wonder? 'Only 95%,' says George, joking, who happily travels around the country and abroad to watch his wife of almost 54 years race. By this point, there is an obvious question that needs answering. How on earth does a woman who had never run until she was 67 become the fastest of all time? Despite not taking part in any organised sport beyond the briefest of social netball stints many decades ago, Roberts has always been a keen gym goer. Initially just the odd circuit class here and there during her days working as a solicitor and raising two children; latterly, post-retirement, every day and all conceivable options, from boxing to Zumba, and yoga to legs, bums and tums. A few years ago, when her gym held a contest to see who could hold the longest plank, Roberts, then just shy of her 70th birthday, tapped out victorious after 10 minutes and 15 seconds. Only boredom, and a lack of genuine challengers, made her stop. Advertisement Recently, while hoovering up world titles in Florida, she was approached by researchers who asked to conduct some tests on her. They found her resting heart rate drops as low as 38 beats per minute and her VO2 max, which measures the body's ability to use oxygen during exercise, is 54 – both comparable to an elite athlete generations younger. She awaits full MRI results, but the radiographer who conducted the scans was instantly stunned by the lack of fat running through her legs. 'I feel fitter than I've ever felt before, which is fantastic,' she says. 'You don't expect to feel that when you're 75.' Her formal running training remains minimal. Other than a track session on Mondays and intervals on Tuesdays, her only other regular outing is the trusty Saturday morning parkrun. The remainder of her fitness is cultivated through those daily gym visits. Remarkably, given her advancing years, she is only getting quicker, so far improving her best times every summer since starting to compete. 'Whatever I'm doing seems to be working,' she says, smiling. Having braved that initial 800m race at an age when most would never consider it, she hopes her story may inspire others. What unknown talents lie dormant, just waiting for a chance to emerge? Advertisement 'I'd like people to think that they should always try something,' she says. 'You never know what you can do until you try it. Never think you're too old. Give it a go. You will surprise yourself at what you can do if you really try to do something.' Earlier, as we left the towpath and wound our way through the village towards home – one of us sweating considerably more than the other twice his age – two scenarios sprang to mind. One was the thought of what she might achieve with the aid of a properly conceived full-time running regime – a suggestion that Roberts gives short shrift, fully content as she is, with sufficient honours to validate her current approach. The other was what might have been. Given her apparent physiological advantages – and notwithstanding the paucity of middle and long-distance events open to women until the latter decades of the 20th century – does she wonder what she could have accomplished if made aware of her running prowess at a younger age? 'No, I don't,' she says. 'I'm just very grateful that I've discovered it now. I've had a good life and enjoyed whatever I've done in the past. I don't go into what-ifs because all the other factors would have been different anyway. But I'm very happy for the current situation. 'I'm just amazed really. I could always run for a bus, but I never thought I would ever be anywhere near the best in the world. It never would have crossed my mind.'
The Guardian
31-05-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
‘Never think you're too old': Meet the world's fastest 75-year-old woman
Along a sun-dappled canal towpath in picturesque Hertfordshire countryside, a grey-brown bob rises and falls with the effortless bounce of a lithe, spectacled figure gliding her way past dog-walkers and afternoon ramblers. There is a watch – one of those smart-technology devices capable of producing all sorts of unnecessary metrics – on Sarah Roberts's wrist, but she has forgotten to switch it on. Roberts, a grandmother of five, tends not to take note of such things. When she does go for a run – an occurrence of surprising infrequency – she prefers to be guided by feel; distances and times forgotten upon return to her front door. The fastest 75-year-old woman in history – a multiple world champion and world-record holder – possesses no training logbook, no coach and, most intriguingly, almost zero running pedigree for most of her life. Asked by the hastily stretching Guardian journalist – foolishly attempting to keep pace for a few miles – how she is capable of launching straight into a run without any semblance of a warm-up, she reveals she only stretches before races 'so that I don't look unprofessional'. Her Great Britain Masters singlet reveals taut muscles and supple limbs that would never have been employed for their current purpose were it not for a holiday to South Africa eight years ago. Trips there had been a frequent occurrence long before a Cape Town-based friend asked whether Roberts and her husband George would like to join their regular Saturday morning parkrun – the wonderful innovation that welcomes all comers to undertake 5km at whatever pace they choose. Sheltered under trees at the foot of Table Mountain, they savoured this one at no more than a pleasurable amble. The following week they went again, only this time Roberts ran small segments. On their return to their Hertfordshire home, the couple decided to sign up to their local parkrun. For three years, almost every Saturday morning involved a 5km run, with Roberts converting from running novice to regular attendee, whittling her time down from just shy of 30 minutes to less than 23. Just a few weeks off her 70th birthday, she then took a plunge by joining her local athletics club, Dacorum, and signing up for an 800m race at the end of the summer. 'I was discovering I was really quite good,' she explains after our canal run, while sitting in front of an antique mantel clock in a living room adorned with furnishings from decades gone by. 'That made me think I ought to see whether I could do other things, so I put myself in for an 800. I'd never even been on a track before. The gun went and all I knew is I had to go round twice. 'The only other people in the race were either under-17 or under-15, and then there was me, almost 70. These girls just shot off in the distance looking like gazelles and I ran round. I was way last and didn't know what time I'd done, but someone told me it was rather good for my age.' The Covid pandemic dashed almost all running opportunities over the next two years, aside from irregular parkruns when permitted. So, it was not until early 2022 that she was able to contest another 800m, unexpectedly taking the scalp of a multiple global age-group champion in the process. 'Nobody had heard of me or expected me to do anything,' says Roberts. By 2023, she was a double British champion in the 70-74 age group. The following year she won three world titles over 800m, 1500m and 5,000m, before adding four more indoor golds this March. 800m outdoor: 2min 58.12sec800m indoor: 2.57.321,500m outdoor: 6.06.201,500m indoor: 5.58.15Mile outdoor: 6.40.323,000m indoor: 12.28.825,000m outdoor: 22.40.155km road: 21.3310,000m outdoor: 45.59.8110km road: 44.33 Since her birthday last October, she has swept the board of 75+ world records over every track distance from 800m to 10,000m indoors and outdoors, as well as 5km and 10km on the road. Last weekend, she added mile and 10,000m world records to her bulging haul despite less than 90 minutes between races. It is a staggering array of accolades for someone whose running experience never previously extended beyond chasing primary school friends around the playground. Upstairs in their smart detached home, off a hallway lined with photos of their children and grandchildren, sits a room that used to function as an office but is now primarily occupied with Roberts' late-blooming running career. Surrounded by cardboard boxes marked with such mundanities as 'sewing', 'Scrabble' and 'wrapping paper' lie an assortment of athletics paraphernalia, from certificates to printed race results, and photo albums to a frankly overwhelming number of medals. How much does running now occupy Roberts' life, I wonder? 'Only 95%,' says George, joking, who happily travels around the country and abroad to watch his wife of almost 54 years race. By this point, there is an obvious question that needs answering. How on earth does a woman who had never run until she was 67 become the fastest of all time? Despite not taking part in any organised sport beyond the briefest of social netball stints many decades ago, Roberts has always been a keen gym goer. Initially just the odd circuit class here and there during her days working as a solicitor and raising two children; latterly, post-retirement, every day and all conceivable options, from boxing to Zumba, and yoga to legs, bums and tums. A few years ago, when her gym held a contest to see who could hold the longest plank, Roberts, then just shy of her 70th birthday, tapped out victorious after 10 minutes and 15 seconds. Only boredom, and a lack of genuine challengers, made her stop. Recently, while hoovering up world titles in Florida, she was approached by researchers who asked to conduct some tests on her. They found her resting heart rate drops as low as 38 beats per minute and her VO2 max, which measures the body's ability to use oxygen during exercise, is 54 – both comparable to an elite athlete generations younger. She awaits full MRI results, but the radiographer who conducted the scans was instantly stunned by the lack of fat running through her legs. 'I feel fitter than I've ever felt before, which is fantastic,' she says. 'You don't expect to feel that when you're 75.' Her formal running training remains minimal. Other than a track session on Mondays and intervals on Tuesdays, her only other regular outing is the trusty Saturday morning parkrun. The remainder of her fitness is cultivated through those daily gym visits. Remarkably, given her advancing years, she is only getting quicker, so far improving her best times every summer since starting to compete. 'Whatever I'm doing seems to be working,' she says, smiling. Having braved that initial 800m race at an age when most would never consider it, she hopes her story may inspire others. What unknown talents lie dormant, just waiting for a chance to emerge? 'I'd like people to think that they should always try something,' she says. 'You never know what you can do until you try it. Never think you're too old. Give it a go. You will surprise yourself at what you can do if you really try to do something.' Earlier, as we left the towpath and wound our way through the village towards home – one of us sweating considerably more than the other twice his age – two scenarios sprang to mind. One was the thought of what she might achieve with the aid of a properly conceived full-time running regime – a suggestion that Roberts gives short shrift, fully content as she is, with sufficient honours to validate her current approach. The other was what might have been. Given her apparent physiological advantages – and notwithstanding the paucity of middle and long-distance events open to women until the latter decades of the 20th century – does she wonder what she could have accomplished if made aware of her running prowess at a younger age? 'No, I don't,' she says. 'I'm just very grateful that I've discovered it now. I've had a good life and enjoyed whatever I've done in the past. I don't go into what-ifs because all the other factors would have been different anyway. But I'm very happy for the current situation. 'I'm just amazed really. I could always run for a bus, but I never thought I would ever be anywhere near the best in the world. It never would have crossed my mind.'
