5 Athletes Who Inspire This Summer

A shoulder injury and rough seas forced Diana Nyad to cut short her attempt to swim 103 miles from Havana to Key West after 29 hours of continuous swimming. But nevertheless, the 61-year-old endurance athlete succeeded at her real mission: to be a role model for fellow boomers. As she later blogged, Nyad wanted to show us all how to "dream large...and to tap all the physical, physiological, and emotional potential" that we have.

But Nyad isn't the only older athlete who is inspiring us this summer. As an aspiring martial arts student, I'm just as moved by the remarkable achievement of Keiko Fukuda of San Francisco, a judo master who began studying the art in 1935, and who gave a ground-breaking demonstration of kata, or forms, at the 1964 Olympics. At age 98, Sensei Fukuda, whose motto is "Be strong, be gentle, be beautiful," still teaches three times a week, and USA Judo recently honored her with a promotion to 10th degree black belt, a level reached by only three other judo athletes in the world.

Another astonishing nonagenarian athlete is Floridian Charlie Futrell, who in June, at age 90, crossed the finish line in a sprint triathlon (a quarter-mile swim followed by 10 miles of cycling and a 3-mile run) in two hours, 18 minutes and 38 seconds. USA Triathlon officials believe he may be the first person his age ever to complete one of their sanctioned events. The retired teacher -- one of his history and phys-ed pupils back in the day was then-13-year-old Sylvester Stallone -- took up jogging in 1978, two years after his retirement, and in 1980 competed in his first race, a 3-mile event. But Futrell aimed even higher and, at age 65, started tackling triathlons. Since then, he's completed 119 of them, including six of the most arduous ones of all, the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii, which consists of a 2.4-mile swim, 112 miles of cycling, and a full 26.2-mile marathon.

"All this training has saved me and kept me alive," Futrell recently explained in this Orlando Sentinel article.

There's also Bruce Milligan, a 60-year-old fencing instructor from Savage, Md., who started the sport at age 14 and has been involved in it as an athlete or teacher ever since, including a stint as head coach at Vassar College. As this Baltimore Sun article reports, Milligan overcame a spate of recent injuries, including a stress fracture in his foot and a torn knee meniscus, to win the gold medal in the 60-and-over foil at the recent National Fencing Championships in Nevada. "Sometimes willpower can take the body where you want to go," he explains.

But I'm even more impressed by the tenacity of Roy Lewis, a 68-year-old athlete from El Dorado Hills, Calif., who recently competed in the World Masters Track and Field Championships in Sacramento. Lewis didn't win any medals (he finished sixth in the javelin, 12th in the weight throw and 17th in the shot put), but that doesn't convey the true impressiveness of his achievement. As this recent Folsom Telegraph article details, Lewis was a high school track athlete but then pretty much gave up strenuous activity for most of the next five decades, choosing instead to become a self-described "couch potato."

Over the years, Lewis developed various health problems: He was diagnosed with Type II diabetes 20 years ago and seven years ago had a cancerous kidney removed. A couple years ago, Lewis' adult daughter finally convinced him to try a little walking for exercise at a local park. But once he started anew, Lewis got more ambitious. He heard about masters track and decided to give it a try. Pretty soon, he was training in earnest four times a week. Even though he can throw the shot about half of the 46 feet that was his high school best, he discovered he's still good enough to compete at the senior level -- and more important, that he loved doing it.

"I feel better physically, but more than that, I feel a whole lot better psychologically," Lewis told the Folsom newspaper. He encourages others to follow his example. "If an old guy like me can get out of his easy chair and start exercising, you can too," he says.

In this insightful Washington Post article, 62-year-old media consultant and tennis player Rebecca Leet, who played on her college tennis team and still competes at the highest local amateur levels, reports that older athletes are causing medical experts to reconsider traditional preconceptions about the effect of aging on physical capabilities and performance. Vonda Wright, director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Performance and Research Initiative for Masters Athletes, told Leet that how we age is "30 percent genetics and 70 percent under our direct control." Wright says that "the fact is, a 75-year-old athlete may still perform many times faster and be in better health than a sedentary 30- or 40-year-old."