01/12/2023
This is more of a 'runners' photo' (I think) than the ones I often post which crop into the head and shoulders. I make these tighter crops in order to highlight emotion and, yes, I admit it, the athlete's age - something I do - obviously! - to show how awesome she or he is. But take a look at GB's Iris Holder, 81, as she strides towards the line that marks lift-off point for the in the women's 80-84 year old age group. Runners like to see stride length and the overall dynamics of an athlete's movement. I hope you can see here that Iris has a beautifully fluid and wide stride; not something you'd maybe normally associate with women in the 80+ age group. But then you have to recalibrate your sense of what's normal when you see WMA - World Masters Athletics , such as the ones that have just finished in Tampere, Finland.
Iris, who is the British for the long jump both in the 75+ age group and her present one, the 80+, earned a bronze medal here in Tampere, clearing 2.70m. Her fluid and powerful stride also gave her a gold medal in the women's 100m in her 80-84 year old age category.
An astute respondent to one of my earlier posts observed that if and when athletes such as Iris do figure in the news, it's often as a 'well, fancy that!' item at the end of the news. How patronising this is, she observed. You don't end up running like Iris at 81 without consistent, tough training, week in, week out, throughout the year. All these masters athletes, with their eyes on a medal or even a , do it.
I was chatting with a younger athlete in the 40+ age group at the championships and she'd said that when she first started competing as a , she'd had pretty much that same attitude herself. But then she got talking to her older fellow competitors, and they told her about their goals, their training regimens and their times, and she had a lightbulb moment. "I realised," she said, " they're just normal athletes. Like the rest of us." And that's just what they are, friends, trust me. Normal athletes. Let's get them recognised as such 👊
