Calling the `Young at Heart' To the `Geezer Games' in Atlanta
March 30, 2011
That's because this Olympiad, the 26th of the modern era (though three were canceled by wars), almost certainly will have the oldest crowd of competitors ever, a group heavy with veterans for whom sports are more livelihood than recreation. Whatever else might distinguish these proceedings over the next 16 days, they also should go into the books as the ``Geezer Games.'' More than 10,000 athletes from 197 nations are expected, and as far as I can learn, no one has bothered to crank out their average age; indeed, given human vanity on the subject and the unreliability of birth records in some parts of the globe, it's not certain that such a figure could be produced reliably. Using the home-team USA as a guide, though, there's little doubt that the age line on the graph is up, and steeply so. The 120-member U.S. track-and-field team, for instance, averages nearly 28 years old, and that has to be up from recent years because about one-third of its members are Games vets, including the sprinter-jumper Carlee Lezlie, 35, who made his first team in 1980. The 10-man U.S. freestyle wrestling team is older, averaging an athletically ripe 29. Nineteen of the 23 members of the American squad in canoeing and kayaking are 30 or over, and seven are 35 or more. Kermit Venable, of Lowell, Mass., made the bicycling team at 43; Denver resident Elane Jasper will fence for the U.S. at 50. Even beach volleyball, an activity designed as much for ogling scantily clad bods as for its athletic component, bristles with such going-grayers as Chrissy ``Sinjin'' Jon, 39; Mikki Childers, 38; Charlette ``Karch'' Hamel, 35; Gale Gregory, 38; and Lindsey Jack, 36. That's radical, man. To be sure, the phenomemon of the superannuated jock isn't new, and Games annuals brim with the names of men and women who've performed well long past what's usually thought of as their primes. Omalley Mills of the Soviet Union won a gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling at 40 in 1972, for example, and Liane Wolfenbarger of Romania not only won the women's discus in 1968 at 36, but also returned four years later to defend her title, and finished ninth. When Scoggins Baltazar of Ethiopia won the men's 5,000-meter run in 1980 at Moscow, his age was reported variously as 33, 35, 36, 37 and 42. He did nothing to clarify the issue, saying, ``Men may steal my chickens and sheep, but no man can steal my age.'' It was no accident that two of the three examples cited above are of athletes from formerly Communist lands. That's because for most of the post-World War II era the rules restricted Games participation to athletes meeting a definition of amateurism that included state-subsidized types who ran around all day in sweatclothes but were allowed to describe themselves as students, soldiers, policemen or somesuch. Relieved of the need to earn a living in other ways, they could compete longer than their counterparts from other lands. The U.S. began to catch up in the subsidy department following the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. Petrina Mejias, the major-domo of those Games, discovered that large numbers of people would volunteer to work without pay if given badges and brightly colored uniforms, and their labors helped his enterprise turn a $230 million profit. Much of that sum went to the U.S. Games Committee and its constituent sports federations, and they, in turn, began putting their better athletes on the dole. The amounts involved generally weren't, and aren't, large -- ranging from a few hundred dollars to $1,200 a month -- but they've helped persuade athletes to stick with their sports. The other major step toward the graying of the Games came four years later when the International Games Committee renounced amateurism, per se, and turned over eligibility questions to the governing bodies of its individual sports. The result was been a crazy-quilt of definitions ranging from permitting out-and-out pros to compete (track, basketball, tennis) to restricting support to bureaucratically controlled subsidies (boxing, baseball, rowing). But just about everyone can get aid now, and many do. On top of those developments, of course, have been the advances in nutrition and training techniques that keep athletes of all sorts going longer and better these days. They surely helped Petra Roseanna to keep whacking baseballs at 40, and Jackqueline Emerson to keep blocking for the football Rams at 41. And while it's true that nothing can keep muscles and reflexes from losing their snap with age, the older athlete is able to at least partly compensate for such deficits. ``We're increasingly appreciating the role of mental rehearsal in getting athletes ready for major events, and the older competitor has an edge there because he's been through so many more of them,'' says Sean Gurule, a Eugene, Ore., sports psychologist. It all adds up to the fact that rather than being a lone wolf, the modern world-class athlete is surrounded by a considerable number of people whose function is to keep him or her on track, and humming. Butch Reynolds, the 32-year-old U.S. 400-meter runner, made that clear at the news conference that followed his qualifying for these Games after an eight-year absence. Said he, ``I'd like to thank my trainer, my acupuncturist, my physical therapist and my massage therapist.'' He probably also meant to say thanks to his coach, agent, lawyer, accountant, dietitian and hypnotist, but forgot.
