[MUSIC AND SPORTS SOUNDS]
[OLGA KOTELKO] My name is Olga Kotelko.
I was born in Saskatchewan,
in Canada, on March second, nineteen-nineteen.
And I took up
track and field when I turned seventy-seven.
And I have been doing track and field championships
all over the world
since then.
[ART KRAMER] Olga was a farm girl for many years in Canada.
And living that kind of life, in which you are very physically active, that is probably a
real plus. But being involved in life
and finding something that you are passionate about, and she did. And she competed her
seventies, not thinking it would lead to much.
And, boy, it has led to quit a bit.
[KOTELKO] For an athlete to get one World Record
in a lifetime is an achievement.
And I, in my age group...
ninety to ninety four...
I have seventeen World Records.
[KRAMER] Olga is certainly exceptional
in many ways.
She did not start her
competitive athletics until she was in her seventies, which is pretty rare.
That is where,
seventies, eighties, and nineties,
is the age
at which Olga has earned all of her medals
[KOTELKO] In my fifteen years of competing in track and field championships,
I amassed twenty-four World Records,
six-hundred-seventy-four gold medals,
twenty-one silver,
and nine bronze.
[KRAMER] I think one of the things we forget as we get older is that we can
continue to stay fit.
And we know that fitness is good for our brain and staying involved in
physical activity. 0:01:57.830,0:01:60.170 But we often come up with lots of excuses. 0:01:60.170,0:02:03.520 It is not that Olga does not have a aches and pains.
She has aches and pains. But she also has tremendous motivation to compete.
[KOTELKO] It just came into my life.
I really did not know what I was
getting myself into.
[KRAMER] It is not that she
is an athlete one event. Most people specialize in one
particular race, or maybe two.
She pretty much does everything from sprints to the field events
[KOTELKO] I played softball prior to that. A little bit. Just social.
Nothing athletic. Nothing too strenuous.
When I was turning seventy-seven,
I went into track and field because... you throw a softball and here
you are throwing, or putting, a shot put.
And as well hammer and javelin.
And then, of course, I started sprints...
because your run from base to base in baseball.
And then I took up jumping and I thought to myself, well, gheewiz, I have
not jumped since I was
fifteen-years-old. And here I am doing jumping. And I love it.
I love all of my events that I am doing.
[KRAMER] I asked her last night if she had ever pole vaulted. And I was surprised to hear
that, in her late seventies, she was pole vaulting. I was pole vaulting as a teenager,
and I can tell you,
it takes little toll of your body when you are flipping around in the air and trying
to land in the pit.
[KOTELKO] I am a farmer's daughter so I have never stopped working.
And, to me, work is exercise. I do all the gardening. We have a big lot.
and I grow vegetables.
I attend acqua-fit class three times a week.
And that is aerobics in the water.
I as well
developed an exercise program for myself.
When I wake up at two o'clock in the morning and
cannot go to sleep for sometime,
that is when I do my stretching exercises. And it takes me an hour-and-a-half
to complete my program.
And I include stretching, massaging, reflexology, yoga exercise,
which I believe
is what keeps my body the way it is.
[KRAMER] We were contacted by Bruce Grierson,
who is in New York Times writer who is writing a book about Olga
and her athletic feats.
And he had broached the topic of whether
we would be willing to take a look at her brain
in terms of both structure and function and her ability to do cognitive tasks, both
paper and pencil and computer-based.
So we thought this was an interesting opportunity to meet somebody who is very
unique. And we often appreciate that,
whether they are patients or unique in other ways.
She did a variety of different MRI tests to look at brain structure
and a functional magnetic resonance imaging test
to look at brain function to look at hemodynamics.
I can tell you I have looked at
the structural scans of her brain and her brain does not look like the
brain of a ninety-year-old. What happens as we get older
is that the ventricles get bigger and the brain tissue gets compressed, or gets
smaller.
She seems to have plenty of brain tissue. Her ventricles are a little bit
bigger,
but I would not say exceptionally bigger than are seventy-year-olds. And she is twenty-plus
years older than that.
She also was on our treadmill in the CAVE,
in a street-crossing task that we use to scale-up
laboratory tests of the ability to multi-task
to a quasi-real-world task: crossing the street with distraction.
She did some behavioral testing. We have batteries of cognitive tests
that test different aspects of memory and decision-making,
attention, linguistic pressing.
And we are able to compare her to people of different ages. And we are doing that now.
I think we can learn a lot for people who are unique in many ways.
And Olga is unique both
in terms of her cognitive abilities --
I can tell you that from spending a couple of hours with her. And my bet is
we will see that on the cognitive tests. Her brain, at least the brain
structure that we have looked that thus far,
looks pretty remarkable for someone her age. And it is always great to hear
stories about people who have tremendous levels of motivation and compete and
never give that up.
[KOTELKO] It is to stay healthy, of course.
But I love traveling.
I love meeting people.
I love to make new friends. But it is so nice to meet old friends
from year to year.
[KRAMER] In fact, what was probably most impressive to me was,
most ninety-plus-year-olds take a nap each day.
And she went strong from nine AM to nine PM.
In fact, she seemed to have more energy than anybody else,
including the students who were about sixty-plus years younger than she was.
[KOTELKO] It is not something that is hard
I am sure you will get to like to
do all these things that I am doing,
But you have to try.
You have to try.
Start easy.
Moderate.
and progress from there on.
And do just as much as you can.
Do not hurt yourself. Do not strain. Have discipline.
And have control. And, of course, help your body to heal.
And this is how I held my body --
by exercising.
[CHEERS]
This is my passion.
But exercise is very good, no matter what you are doing,
what your passion may be.
[KRAMER] In the olympics we often celebrate youth
and Olga certainly suggests I think her ability to do which she has been
able to do, which is pretty remarkable,
is that we can be very active and be competitive throughout our lives.
Are are often not, but I think we can be.
And we do have senior olympics. It is just they do not get the press coverage.
But in some ways I think it is as remarkable, or more remarkable,
than a twenty-five-year-old competing --
that we have a ninety-year-old still competing.
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