At Orono masters nationals in 2002, I met a transgender (male-to-female) sprinter. We sat in the far side of the stands, and she told me her story. She was kind of strange. She told me she never drinks water after competition. But one thing caught my attention: She told me she had seen Phil Raschker up-close and that Phil was actually a former man, a transgender like her. Hard to believe. But this tall thin lady was insistent, saying proof was in Phil’s Adam’s apple. I undertook a quiet investigation, writing friends in Germany, where Phil was born. The upshot? The sex-change theory was total bunk.

Phil was photographed in midstride for the NYT by Erik Lesser.

The movie “Racing Against the Clock” provided further proof that Phil’s a natural girl who became a world-class track legend.

My reason for fessing up now? In mid-October, Mike Tierney, an Atlanta-based sportswriter for The New York Times, interviewed me by phone. I told Mike the Phil-as-male story, and it was included in Wednesday’s New York Times. See it here.

Now I apologize to Phil and everyone for pursuing this wild goose chase, which Phil heard about secondhand years ago. I was led astray by a bum steer.

Anyway, the NYT profile of Phil is long overdue. It comes after her naked appearance in ESPN the magazine. Whatever. All attention to Phil is worthwhile for the sport.

Phil is one of a kind. But that one-of-a-kind.

Here’s the first part of the NYT story, in case the link goes behind a firewall:

Running, Jumping and Hardly Aging on the Track
By MIKE TIERNEY

MARIETTA, Ga. — Philippa Raschker, the most enduring female athlete you’ve never heard of, is flying solo, dashing down a track that rings a high school football field.

With no discus or shot or javelin or hurdles handy, no pole vault or high jump or long jump pit on the premises, the day’s casual workout — conducted alone, as usual — is limited to sprints, her specialty.

Trim in two-piece running garb, she is economy in motion, reddish-brown hair like a jet’s contrails, painted fingernails glistening in the sun. Why wouldn’t a publication that annually celebrates the contours of athletes’ physiques and appearances, causing double takes, consider her for its pages?

Except one thing.

“Wait a minute,” Raschker had told the caller from ESPN the Magazine who invited her to pose while loping naked in its issue called The Body. “Do you know I’m 63 years old?”

Assured the magazine did, she eagerly accepted, then spent a full day in upstate New York, running and log-jumping into an icy swimming hole at a photographer’s behest.

For Raschker — widely known as Phil, except when others on the World Masters Athletics circuit that she has lorded over for nearly three decades lovingly address her as Grandmother — disrobing on the run was a welcome out-of-body-and-clothes experience.

“I feel very good about my body,” she said, attributing her lack of prudishness to her European roots and comfort at topless beaches. “I take care of it. I hope they’ll have me back when I’m 70.”

Surely she will be competing then, at something. The hunger to lock horns athletically is as acute as it was 50 years ago, when Raschker aged out of daycare in her native West Germany and enlisted with a track club.

At age 20, she moved to the United States, began dabbling in track and quit a new job when the manager denied her a day off for a meet, according to a book about older competitors, “Second Wind: The Rise of the Ageless Athlete.”

Scurrying to as many as 36 competitions a year, Raschker became a regular at the United States nationals. She was a women’s pole-vault pioneer. An adventurous sort, she has vaulted against men and even engaged them in the decathlon, in which only men normally compete.

At one meet, she entered an alien event, the triple jump, against men after two of them took her by the arms and showed her the technique. At another, she was roped at the last second into the steeplechase, which she had never practiced, to help fill out a small field.

It is the global masters program, in which nobody ever ages out, that Raschker has turned into her domain.
In its world indoor and outdoor championships combined, for women 35 and older, Raschker has won 71 gold medals, 19 silver and 7 bronze.

She has set more than 200 records and still holds 63 United States and 18 world marks. The numbers are made possible by the masters format of dividing participants into five-year age increments (i.e., 60 to 64), allowing for rebirth every five years.

Its world meet — in Sacramento this summer — will draw up to 12,000 athletes. While most entrants choose a few events, à la carte, Raschker treats such gatherings as a buffet. Typically, she enters all three sprints, both hurdles and every jump, along with the seven-discipline heptathlon. The weights, her least liked endeavors, are no picnic for a 110-pounder — “I get dizzy” — but she has sampled them all.

Stop right there. “Draw up to 12,000 athletes” at Sacramento worlds?

Not in this universe. In 1993, Miyazaki, Japan, worlds had 14,000 entrants — but most were in the accompanying marathon, not the track meet. Sacramento won’t have 7,000 total, I’ll bet.

No matter. As long as Phil is there, the meet will be one for the ages.