Hall of Famer Irene Obera, now 71 and looking to become the first W70 to break 15 seconds for the 100-meter dash, tells the San Mateo Times that after San Sebastian she’s returning to retirement. (She competed at the Hawaii nationals this month after an injury break of several years.) I chatted with Irene in Hawaii, and she’s as modest as she is dominating in her event. Maybe a renewed taste of sucess in Spain will persuade her to keep on trackin’.

Just in case the link goes dead, here’s the great story by Jeff Farudo:
Fremont’s Obera outruns the world at age 71
By Jeff Faraudo, STAFF WRITER
The challenge these days for Irene Obera is finding a new horizon to conquer, a fresh goal to chase.
At 71 years old, Obera has enjoyed an audience with the late Pope John Paul II, played softball against Frank Sinatra and set more age-group sprinting world records than she can remember.
Somehow, a quiet game of bridge just doesn’t seem a sufficient exclamation point to all that.
So Obera, her once-sore knees feeling livelier after six years away from track and field, returned to the starting blocks early this month. With a training base of just three months, the Fremont resident set an American record in the 100-meter dash for 70-and-over women at the USA Masters Track and Field Championships in Honolulu.
The USA event — at which she never has lost to anyone in her age group over a 30-year span — really was merely a tuneup for the 16th World Masters Athletics Championships, which begin Monday in San Sebastian, Spain.
Obera has run at the biennial world masters meet 11 times — including trips to Australia, Italy, Puerto Rico, Sweden, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada, Germany and England — and has totaled 24 gold medals in the 100, 200 and 400.
She was coaxed out of retirement by the carrot of visiting Spain for the first time, but that was only part of her motivation.
“I want to be a world champion in two centuries,” she said.
Enver Mehmedbasich, who has known Obera for two decades and coached her for much of that time, said his runner is at only about 80 percent of her speed capacity, perhaps 50 percent of her endurance ceiling.
But, while noting she ran faster than the world record in a practice time trial last week, Mehmedbasich said, “I don’t think she’ll have any trouble winning the 100.”
“I expect to win,” confirmed Obera, who also will run the 200. “I’m going to give it my best shot.”
Obera ran 15.57 seconds to set the American record in Hawaii, making her the No.2 seed in the field at Spain. Ahead of her is New Zealand’s Margaret Peters, owner of the age-group world record of 15.16.
While young athletes strive to improve their marks, older runners race against age, aware they cannot match the times they achieved five years before. That reality doesn’t deter Obera, who in 1996 was made an inaugural member of the USA Track and Field Masters Hall of Fame.
“I don’t think like you do,” she said, when asked how she rationalizes running a bit slower each year. “If no one in their 70s has run 14 seconds, I want to be the first.”
Obera grew up in Southern California long before girls had the opportunity to play athletics in high school. But one summer while attending Chico State, she returned home and answered an ad to play on a women’s softball team.
She made the team and got the chance to play against the Hollywood All-Stars, a celebrity squad that featured Sinatra, among others.
Obera’s first brush with track came several years later, while she taught in the Berkeley school district. Intrigued by what she saw at a weekend PE teachers conference, Obera entered a meet in Burlingame in 1957 — and won the 100.
“She has fast-twitch muscles,” Mehmedbasich said, explaining Obera’s speed then and now. “You can’t teach people to move their feet faster. It’s the same thing as pitching. You can’t teach a guy to throw a fastball.”
Three years after that first race, still with minimal expertise, Obera qualified for the 1960 Olympic Trials, which were dominated by Wilma Rudolph. Obera missed by one spot qualifying for the finals of the 100.
Eight years later — at age 35 — she tried again at the’68 trials. She ran faster this time — 12.1 seconds — but once more missed the finals.
“She was old already,” Mehmedbasich said. “If she had gotten started earlier, I think she definitely would have been an Olympian.”
Obera refuses to lament the timing of her career. “My father always used to say, ‘Don’t make excuses, make performance.'”
When she crossed the 40-year-old threshold, Obera found her niche. She won her first world masters title as a 44-year-old, capturing the 100 at the 1987 championships in Goteborg, Sweden. In Rome in’85, she swept the 100, 200 and 400 — all with world age-group records — and got to meet the Pope.
Obera said this will be her final track meet, a claim her coach isn’t taking seriously.