Timeline Photos
Rock Stars of Aging.™ It took a great deal of coordination but the effort paid off last week when Champion Goldy Sr., 97, Orville Rogers, 96, Roy Englert, 92, Charles Ross, 91, and Charles Boyle, 91 became the first team of nonagenarians to compete in a relay at an official track meet. Rogers, Englert, Ross and Goldy set the world record in the 4×100 and Boyle replaced Gordy in the world record-setting 4×400 and 4×800 relays.
Getting a team to the USA Track and Field Masters Outdoor Championships last weekend in Winston-Salem, N.C. wasn’t easy. The group organized a pool of potential over 90-year-old runners knowing that many would back out or wouldn’t make it to the starting line. One member cancelled because he had cancer and thought he wouldn’t survive the weekend. Others had illnesses that kept them from traveling. When the 5 runners who made it met the night before their first event, they told one another, “Now 4 of us just have to make it another 24 hours.” No one laughed. They meant that literally.
Englert, like most of his relay teammates, didn’t start running until later in life. His first competition was at 60. “People make themselves old when they say I’m too old to do this and too old to do that,” he says.
Photo: Winston Salem Journal/Bruce Chapman — with David Bluestein.
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