If you’re not an inspiration already (for doing track and field at your age), you can expect to be at age 90. Sure happened for Olga Kotelko. Of course, it helps when you’re setting a gazillion world records. Olga of West Vancouver, British Columbia, also has an athlete’s character and spirit. Her local paper named it: “The Olga Effect.” A wonderful 2,700-word story documents how she had remade the lives of others, simply by her example. “It’s not how old you are; it’s how you get old,” Olga is quoted as saying. “Use it or lose it.” Here’s Olga in February, doing an Olympic torch leg:

Here’s the story, in case the link goes bye-bye:

The Olga Effect
In the name of health, some North Shore seniors are inspiring their peers to take up sport — and win

Andy Prest
North Shore News

Sunday, May 16, 2010

The North Shore Sport Awards ceremony is held every year inside Park Royal Shopping Centre. It’s community spirit at its best, but it can be a tough crowd.

Teenagers with short attention spans shift in their seats and crack wise as they wait for the show to end after their category has come and gone. Delicious food laid out at the back diverts attention from the stage up front. Jokes bounce off the quietly polite crowd, floating up the escalator and into the Gap.

It’s a difficult atmosphere to control, but what else can you expect from a show held inside a mall?

It’s difficult for everyone, that is, except the tiny nonagenarian who wowed the crowd to silence at last month’s show. West Vancouver’s Olga Kotelko, 91, had just been awarded a lifetime athletic achievement award for her exploits as a multiple world champion and world record-setting masters track-and-field athlete. But instead of heading off stage to have her picture taken, as all the other winners did that evening, Kotelko, unbidden, made straight for the microphone.

A nervous hush descended as Kotelko began to describe a recent muscle biopsy she was subjected to, drawing in the crowd with her description of her meeting with the doctor.

“You know what the doctor said?” she asked with a mischievous pause. “He’d never seen such a perfect muscle.”

The crowd exhaled and laughed. Kotelko wrapped up a little pep talk.

“It’s not how old you are; it’s how you get old,” she said. “Use it or lose it.”

That cliché is not getting any younger, but neither is Canada’s population. As the tip of the baby boom prepares to smash down the door of 65, getting them into old age in good health is a huge priority. Kotelko and others like her who have already conquered the golden years may hold the key.

There’s no denying the importance of staying active mentally and physically. As the odometer ticks past 60, 70, 80, 90 years of age, the stakes get higher and higher.

This week emergency room doctors at North Vancouver’s Lions Gate Hospital went public with concerns that the ER was understaffed after yearly patient visits jumped 25 per cent — from 39,000 to 49,000 — from 2006 to 2009. The influx was attributed mainly to the region’s aging population.

“They tend to be older people with heart, lung or kidney (problems), diabetes, asthma, strokes, heart attack, cancer and complications of all those things,” Dr. Mike O’Neil told the North Shore News. “A lot of them are people in their 50s, 60s, 70s. It’s been predicted for years and it’s happening.”

Deborah Crozier, a certified personal trainer who counts exercise for seniors as one of her specializations, has worked with aging clients for the past nine years in her personal training business and with the North Vancouver Recreation Commission. Exercise, says Crozier, plays a crucial role in keeping seniors healthy, which in turn helps keep the health care system healthy.

“The independent living aspect is huge. People want to stay in their own homes; they want to be able to handle going up and down their stairs; they want to be able to dress themselves in the morning and do all their personal care. They want to open jars and be able to cook their own meals,” she says, adding that a fit, balanced body is by far the best way to combat the scourge of all seniors: falling.

“If you exercise on a regular basis you dramatically reduce the risk of falling,” she says. “That is probably the No. 1 fear or risk as you get older. . . . But if you continue the exercise routines, you dramatically reduce your risk of falling. That’s huge.”

The problem, however, can be in motivating seniors to get out and do it, says Crozier, an active 49-year-old who along with working with seniors also runs boot camps for adults in their 20s and 30s. One of the main issues, according to Crozier, is that many in her parents’ generation — those in the 65 and older range — are lacking the proper fitness foundation because exercise was not a part of their lifestyle.

“To me, I think (my grandparents’ generation) was much more active than (my parents’ generation). The grandparents kind of did physical labour around the home or on a farm. There was much more of that activity; there weren’t as many modern conveniences. The last generation had all of those conveniences plus they had . . . those careers where you didn’t have time to fit that into your life for leisure activities.”

Crozier sees it in her own family.

“I always compare it to my Mom,” she says. “She’s pretty sedentary. She’s kind of an old-school Mom. . . . I always think, what is going to get her off the couch?”

The answer to that question varies from person to person, but here on the North Shore there are three huge factors that should help get seniors fit and keep them that way: weather, role models and opportunity. The weather is self-explanatory when you look at a temperature map for Canada on a winter day. The other two, though, could use some elaboration.

It’s 5:45 a.m. on a Thursday in early May. A group of women set out from North Vancouver’s William Griffin recreation centre on a run through the forested neighbourhoods surrounding Edgemont Village. Today there are five runners, but at times the group can swell to as many as 12. Talk this morning drifts to last night’s Canucks playoff game.

“What did you think of that goal where they pushed Luongo into the net?” one woman says. “I don’t think that should have counted.”

“My husband, he was just losing it at the guy — Beeks? Bieksa?” says another runner. “He’s yelling at the screen, ‘Get him off of the ice!’ I’m like, calm down; it’s just a hockey game.”

Part way through the run a woman named Betty Jean stops and turns back — she can’t finish the day’s route. Three runners go on while one accompanies an apologetic Betty Jean back to the rec centre.

Her decision to shut it down for the day is understandable. For one thing, she’s still battling a flu that has dogged her for more than a month. (“I call it the H1N2,” she says. “It feels like a combination of the swine one and the bird.”)

She’s also just run a half marathon five days before. And she’s 82.

The runner is North Vancouver’s Betty Jean McHugh, the sharp, down-to-earth namesake of the running group known as BJ’s Entourage. She’s also the holder of several age-group world records at the marathon and half marathon distances.

All of the runners in the Entourage — a group that trains together and attends distance races in places like Victoria and Honolulu — are younger than her, some almost half a lifetime so. Mysia Gruber, 43, is in her sixth year with the group. She’s known as one of the “newbies.” Some members have been running with McHugh for more than 20 years.

It’s a rare thing to see McHugh felled by the flu; Gruber says she’s never seen McHugh call off a run in her six years in the group, and while some of the members attend sporadically, the eldest is at nearly every session.

When she first started running with the Entourage, Gruber was told that the only rule they have is no complaining. Having McHugh along for the run makes it easy, Gruber says.

“How can you complain when you have BJ with you? You’re feeling sore or you’re tired or you’re bitching about your job or family or something, and you look over and there’s BJ ready to go. Maybe when I’m 83, then I can complain. I’ve got another 40 years to go.”

Athletes like McHugh and Kotelko can provide great inspiration and motivation for their friends and even for complete strangers, says Crozier.

“I think having the ‘super seniors,’ or the senior athletes as I call them, is a great motivating factor,” the personal trainer says. “I don’t think seniors are any different than us — they need their heroes and role models for their age also. . . . It’s a huge motivating (factor). It’s like: ‘If they can do it, I can do it too; if they can run a marathon and set a record, well I can walk around the block 10 times and not complain about it.’ ”

West Vancouver 73-year-old Christa Bortignon, an active senior who needed a new form of exercise after wrist injuries slowed her tennis game, found her inspiration in a story in the North Shore News about Kotelko. Bortignon contacted her West Vancouver neighbour last year and got more than she bargained for.

“I saw her picture in the paper, and since she lived in West Van, I called her up. She was very, very nice on the phone and told me she’d be at the track in half an hour.”

Feeling Kotelko’s pull, Bortignon met her at West Van secondary and stepped onto a running track to train for the first time in 57 years.

“We walked around the track a couple of times and she told me that I could do it,” says Bortignon. “Two days later, she called me up and (asked) if I had signed up for the Canadian track and field masters championships in Kamloops yet.”

Bortignon eventually did sign up for Kamloops, where she competed in the long jump and 100 metres. She loved it.

“When I went into the first competition, I had never really run 100 metres,” she says. “When I came in under 19 seconds, I was very surprised.”

Last September, Bortignon went to the B.C. Seniors Games in Richmond where she upped her participation to five events, adding the triple jump, high jump and shot put. She took home five medals in the 70-74 age category — including two golds — while setting provincial age-group records in the high jump and triple jump. She was shocked when she later found her name on a list of the top-10-ranked 70-year-old triple jumpers — in the world. It’s no surprise that it’s her favourite event.

“It’s like flying,” she says. “You’re sort of ripping along and getting up into the air and it just makes you feel good.”

Now that she has a taste for competition, Bortignon says she wants to keep at it.

“I always did some kind of sports, but nothing really structured. Now I want to pursue this further, because I think I could still do better than what I’m doing now.”

And Bortignon doesn’t just show up on race day and toe the starting line; she trains up to five days a week, practicing her techniques and upping her speed. It’s all thanks to Kotelko.

“If I hadn’t heard of Olga, I probably would not have ventured into it,” she says. “She’s just an amazing lady, and I hope she inspires a lot more people. I just find it amazing the way she does what she does.”

And Kotelko certainly isn’t shy about pushing and prodding people to follow in her fit footsteps. Last month, she presented a seminar at the Vancouver Wellness Show. As she left the stage, she was approached by a woman who had a strange request.

“Olga, give me a hug because I want some of your energy,” the woman said. Kotelko laughs as she recalls the encounter.

“I thought to myself, that was a very beautiful compliment.”

There are all kinds of different opportunities for seniors to get active, including classes at community rec centres, masters sports teams and private trainers. The path that Kotelko, Bortignon and an increasing number of seniors are following is the very inexpensive, highly social and moderately competitive world of the seniors games.

There are a lot of competitions to choose from abroad and close to home. The B.C. Seniors Games began with a multi-sport event in Vernon in 1988 that attracted 650 competitors. It’s now held annually, and it has grown in size each year, reaching a high of 3,865 participants last year in Richmond.

“We bring people together from all over the province,” says Derek Francis, Lower Mainland director for the B.C. Seniors Games Society. “Many of them have been coming for years. We have some participants who have been involved in the Games right back to 1988 in Vernon and they see each other once a year at the Games. It’s a very festive, joyous event.”

Bortignon says she was surprised by what she found when she made it to her first big event.

“I didn’t realize that there’s a whole other world out there for masters athletics. Once I checked into it, I found that there are a lot of very nice people that you meet. It’s a whole new world out there.”

While socializing is a huge part of the program, the athletes are out to do their best. The Games offer an incentive for seniors to continue to train and to work at improving their performances.

“Everybody needs some sort of satisfactions or achievements in life. If you set yourself some goals and you reach them, it gives you a great deal of satisfaction,” says Bortignon.

McHugh uses the races scheduled on her calendar as motivation.

“It’s a matter of setting a goal and (training) for it,” she says. “If you don’t have that goal, you don’t have the same interest in training hard.”

Of course, getting 70-, 80- and 90-year-olds to run marathons, throw javelins and do the high jump is not without risks.

“My very first week of training, I injured myself, and then I knew that I can’t do it the way that I did when I was 15,” says Bortignon. “So I have to make sure I warm up properly and don’t overdo it; I limit myself. Even though I’d like to try more jumps at a time, I limit myself to a certain number. When it’s done, it’s done.”

It’s important to listen to your body, says Crozier, adding that most seniors are pretty good at that.

“At that age group, I find people are very wise,” she says. “There’s always risk in any physical activity, and you have to be smart about it. You have to make sure that your doctor is on board and you are working in a safe environment.”

The benefits, however, far outweigh the risks, says Crozier. “If you eliminate the risks, you just get the benefits: lifestyle, balance, being more sure when you’re walking.”

For McHugh, her morning runs provide another very important benefit: relief from life’s problems. Her husband Bob, formerly her biggest fan on race day, now has dementia.

“He was a great supporter. I really miss that. Now he doesn’t even know if I’m running or where or why,” she says. They recently celebrated their 58th anniversary — well, BJ celebrated by reminding Bob what day it was.

“I woke up and said, ‘Bob, this is a pretty special day.’ He said ‘What day is it? Do I have to go anywhere?’ He hates going anywhere.”

Running lets her leave her cares behind and concentrate on the road ahead of her and the friends beside her.

“It’s a great release for that,” she says. “It sets the day up. That’s why I like running in the morning: I’m sort of set for the day to meet any problems. And there are lots.”

The point, of course, is that you don’t have to set world records to enjoy the benefits of an active lifestyle.

“Don’t feel you have to run a marathon” says Crozier. “If you can, all the power to you, 10 out of 10. If that’s not your thing, just a small little difference can have a huge benefit.”