To an athlete dying old?

"To An Athlete Dying Young" popped into my head last week. I remembered it from high school--not the poem but the title: "dying" and "young" together in the same thought put a brief shiver in our teen-age immortality illusion. Who was this dead guy and what did him in: Heat stroke? EPO? Coronary? A sidewalk punk shot him for his bling? The poem itself, which I just Googled, doesn't offer much in the way of hard news. Literary gossips pursued the tabloid angle: the unnamed "athlete" was the love object of the poet, A.E. Housman, who hid in the closet and never came out.

As far as I can tell, Housman was in no shape to remotely relate to sports: small and frail, the product of a coddling mother and a Stalinesque father, the sum of these parts a wimp with a facial tic who hung out in reading rooms, studied Latin in the British Museum library and wrote wistful, agonized verse the critics dubbed "romantic pessimism." The primary source of the romance and the pessimism was Moses Jackson, the bisexual beefcake who became the poet's fatal attraction.

Fig-leafers of the time called it a "deep, youthful friendship"--whom were they kidding? We're talking Nineties here--not the 1990s, when gay was mainstream OK--the 1890s, where even in trendy Europe, an admitted poet and suspected gay men kept a low profile. Soon enough, the divine Jackson dumped Housman for a woman, which may explain why the poet turns him into a dead athlete and buries him in the first stanza.

What's the point of all this in a Masters athlete blog? The Housman poem is evidence of the traditional mindset about fun and games, where men were manly (no place for girleymen or women) but only for a short prime time, after which they wasted away and lived off their moldy laurels, when they'd be better off as funeral fodder.

As I swallow my daily prostate and cholesterol pills, I'm wondering, why hasn't anybody written "To an Athlete Dying Old?" Housman couldn't have, because in his era, "athlete" and "old" didn't belong in the same thought and more than he and Jackson belonged in the same cot in the Cotswolds. Now we know better, and a contemporary Moses Jackson (if he really was an athlete and not just a hunk) could be out there competing in the Huntsman Games or the Masters or the Senior Olympics and presumably, happy to be alive and sweating.

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Advantage: couch potatoes

Advantage: couch potatoes

Late-in-life athletes have a psychological advantage, especially ex-couch potatoes. Stick with me on this: if you excel in your teens or 20s, whatever the sport, it's odds-on your personal best is old news, soon to be ancient history. For a childhood athletic flop like me (the only kid in phys. ed. who balked at the forward roll; the only kid in Little League to be relegated to the scorer's table--too inept, even to sit on the bench), there's a belated upside: redemption in your 50s and beyond. A latent aerobic talent came out with my gray hair --- I'd have bet my IRA against it (the talent, not the hair)-- but it put me on mountaintops and in bike races. Biking and climbing can't erase my childhood humiliation (0-18 in high school tennis matches; in JV football, ran away from every play to avoid collisions) but at least my wounded ego now lies under a pile of medals from senior time-trial bike sprints. No big deal in the overall scheme of things, but I'm feeling a lot better on the bike and off the antidepressants. It's nice to finally win something --- age category or whatever --- but an ex-couch potato gets an extra boost from rapid self-improvement. Think of it this way: athletes from college and high school can never outdo their youthful exploits. They ran their fastest miles, dashes, etc., long ago, and now they're fighting lag and sag, trying to slow down the slowdown. Here's where a couch potato has two advantages: (1) We didn't blow out knees or shred an ACL in early athletic tussles, our moving parts have less wear and tear; (2) We have no prior jock history, except abysmal, to live up to. When you start racing a bike at 53, as I did, you've got several euphoric years of getting faster; unlike, say, Lance Armstrong, who faces decades of decline. Meanwhile, people my age are supposed to be slouching toward the exits, and I clocked my fastest 10-mile time trial (22 minutes 35 seconds) at 62. Can I top that at 63 and beyond? Probably not---what training giveth, aging taketh away, but from a couch--potato base, later rather than sooner.

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In the swim

The English Channel is a swimmers' Everest. Climbers who've bagged  the tallest peak outnumber swimmers who've crossed the Channel, so  going by head count, the watery conquest is the rarer achievement than  the snowy one. Record breakers seek fame, and possible fortune if their books sell, in both arenas: on Everest for being the oldest to  get to the top, through the Channel for being the oldest or fastest to  get to the other side. At 61, Sue Oldham, an epileptic from Australia,  became the latest champ in the oldest female category (2006). The  prior record holder, Carol Sing of San Diego, was 58. At 70,  George  Brunstad, went the distance and became the oldest male finisher  (2004). A national and world Masters swimming champ, Brunstad credits Tom's of Maine mouthwash for keeping his mouth clean and fresh through  15-plus hours of sea water intake. The press made a fuss over Brunstad --- it gave them an excuse to talk about his Matt Damon connection (the actor is his nephew). Meanwhile, the world's trophy rivers have begun to attract age  and speed record breakers, the most spectacular so far being  Martin  Strel. At 52, the unstoppable Slovenian jumped in at one end of the  Amazon, the bobbed up 65 days later: after fending off piranhas,  gators and bloodsucking toothpick fish along the way. Bogged,  bewildered, and totally bushed, Strel passed up the celebratory press  conference (fastest and the oldest to navigate the entire Amazon) in  favor of the ER at the nearest hospital, which admitted him at first  sight. No stranger to exhausting swims, Strel had already broken speed  and endurance records on the Mississippi (2360 miles, 1998), the  Danube (2000, and the Yangtze (2487 miles, 2004). For more details, check out www.amazonswim.com.

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Life begins at 40, ends at 41

"At 41, Dara Torres is headed for her fifth Olympics--despite taking  several years off, giving birth and having a kid plus two surgeries.  She got herself into top shape and into encouraging headlines: 'Aging  Swimmer Shows There's Hope for the Rest of Us.'"

That was the AP version, and James Taranto, the sassiest blogger at the Wall Street Journal, takes issue with the wordage. "Great",  Taranto says, sarcastically. "She's 41, which means she actually  shows there's hope for those of you who haven't yet hit the Big  Four-Two".

Having just hit the big Six-Three myself, I see can Taranto's point. Torres is great, but how can a guy my age get athletically inspired -- "hope for the rest of us" -- by somebody my children's age? I  gather Dana's got only one body part (eyes) telling her she's old-- she squints at a blurry time clock to see if she's broken another world record. In my case, at 63, a chorus of body parts is chanting geezer.

Notice the headline: "aging swimmer" -- what's with that? Everybody's "aging" from the womb on out, so the term doesn't  mean anything, except as a euphemism for "aged", but with millions  of the neo-elderly in our second childhood rebellion ("burn your AARP  cards, baby!") nobody calls anybody "aged" unless they're over  90.

Whatever you call her, Torres is much to young to be an inspiring  superhero for my age bracket. For that matter, so is Jeanne Longo, a  female phenom in my own sport, cycling,  about to turn 50. If you're  in the Big Five-Oh age range as she is, maybe you'll get  a vicarious  boost from her upcoming trip to Beijing: five-time world champ, back  for another shot at gold. In the trophy case department, Longo's  right up there with Torres; in the publicity department, she's all be  invisible to the public eye. Two reasons for that: (1) cycling has a  tiny fan base in the U.S.; (2) the older you are, the less the mass-market media wants to hear about your sweaty feats.

Re the ageism-in-athletic-publishing subject, I called Terry McDonnel, editor of Sports Illustrated, to pitch a column about over-50 sports  stars. Here's a paraphrase of his
answer: "We tried something like  that. It didn't work. SI readers under 50 could
care less if a 50- year-old breaks some record; and over 50 they care about their own 
exploits, not reading about anybody else's."

Masters Athlete, nee Geezer Jock, survives on the notion that readers ARE interested in other people's exploits. I've been  compiling reports on the oldest man  and the oldest woman to accomplish  great feats: Martin Strel, who swam the length of the Amazon at 52;  Nepalese sherpa Min Bahadur Shenchan, who summited Everest last May at  76; Sue Oldman, who swam the English Channel at 61; Bill McKeague, who  finished an Ironman (Hawaii) at 80; Dmitrion Yordanidis, who finished  a marathon at 98. Stay tuned for the details on these and other aging  (by AP definition) extreme role models who can keep you going into  triple digits on the old chronometer. Do I dare mention the Taiwanese  madam, Grandma Chu, arrested at 82 in a red light district? "Very  light make-up," said the arresting officer, "I took her for a 70- year-old."

I leave you with this downer than needs to be Bronx cheered: In a  recent New York Times  Sunday magazine profile about Torres (6/29/2008)  Elizabeth Weil writes: "Let's face it--compared with the Olympics,  even the Masters World Championship is a gloried losers' round, and  holding a master's world record is hardly an exciting achievement for an athlete who hit the world stage just as she entered high school."

Oh really?

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Who's the real sports hero: LeBron, Phelps or "Phil"?

Philippa "Phil" Raschker is the only athlete over 50 to make the final cut for top amateur athlete of the year---the Sullivan Award. Not only that, she's done it twice: 2003 and again in 2007.

Three finalists for the earlier locker-room Oscar were superstars young enough to call her mom if not granny: Michael Phelps, Apolo Ono and LeBron James, for his pre-NBA exploits. It's no surprise LeBron won and Phil didn't---on the world Masters stage Phil wins everything, but not in the publicity department.

At recent count, LeBron's got 7 million Googles to her 2,450, which puts their relative media value in perspective. As of this post, swimmer Phelps is a 1.2 million Google guy; Ono far back with 66,000 hits. Compared, even, to Ono, Phil has coped with a huge fame deficit, not to mention a perks and support-system deficit.

LeBron's a zillion-dollar pro now, but there's a big difference, say, between Phelps' "amateur" status and Phil's amateur status. Phelps can train and compete full-time, whereas Phil did both in her off hours. For instance, she spent three sleepless nights prior to the Sullivan ceremony 2003 catching up on her clients' tax returns.

Along the way, Phil's created a gold glut in the trophy case, 10 from the Italy meet in 2007, 58 world championships since 1988, setting records in sprints at various distances; hurdles; high, long, and long and triple jumps; pole vault, shot put, pentathlon. Here we've got the most decorated competitor in any sport in Masters memory; yet Raschker is sure bet to stump a Jeopardy panel.

She doesn't need a press agent or a crowd handler. Sure, she gets the occasional mention in the New York Times, and lots of coverage in the Masters media, but to what can we attribute her lopsided overall lack of notoriety, the falling records hardly anybody notices?

Not Raschker's sex; two other dominatrixes of track and field, Florence Joyner and Wilma Rudolph, would never stump a Jeopardy panel. On the Google count, Joyner leads Rudolph 425,000 to 271,000 (Rudolph would have more had she not run her races pre-computer) but both outgoogle Raschker by factors of 10 and 20.

What's the difference here? Not racism or sexism, but ageism devalues Phil's accomplishments --- same story with all the other over-50 record breakers. Her latter-day dominance comes from training and genes, but since lots of other seniors train hard with far less success, credit the genes.As three-time Tour de France winner, cyclist Greg LeMond put it recently in Velo News:

"Your genetic potential does not change in your career. It's there at 17-18--the only thing that changes when you race professionally&.is that you're trying to figure out how to be at your peak."

From what I can gather, Phil played sports in her youth, but didn't get serious until her late 40s. What if she'd started an Olympic-level regime at 15? If, as LeMond suggests, the same right stuff that makes her great now was in her then, she'd be famous for winning everything in her girlhood. Why is having done it later any less impressive?

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Time is on his side

The Rolling Stones/Scorcese docurockamentary ("Shine a Light") is a must-see for anybody with an AARP card. Mick Jagger goes anerobic for an hour forty-five, non-stop chicken strutting and herky-jerking around the stage. Put a bag over his head, or give him a mask with his 20-year-old face and you'd think you were at a Stones concert from 1968. Put this guy in the Boston marathon or the Senior Olympics, don't drug test him, and he'd win his age category in any speed sport. Keith Richards is creaky and sleepy, a typical dude in the retirement home, if you take away his electric guitar, eye make-up, the Johnny Depp pirate hair-do. Has the best in line in the flick, looks out at the crowd and says, "Nice to see you" (pause) "nice to see anybody."

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