70-Year-Old Qualifies for Olympics - as part of the news and politics series by GeoBeats.
Quick, think of a 70 year old!
I bet an Olympic athlete didn't come to your mind.
And this is exactly who Hiroshi Hoketsu is, after having recently qualified for a place in the London 2012 Games for equestrian riding. He has already broken the record for oldest Japanese Olympian when he competed in Beijing at age 67 in 2008. However, the world's oldest olympic competitor record is still retained by Oscar Swahn, who was 72 when he got a silver model for shooting in 1920.
It's incredible how humans keep pushing the age barrier in physically intense competitions.
In October, 2011, Fauja Singh from Toronto stunned the world by completing a marathon at the age of 100! I'll be lucky if I can barely walk by that age!
There are many such other examples - a blind man climbing the Everest, a 60-year old woman from Maine swimming 16 hours and covering 21 miles to swim across the English Channel.
Olympics games started more than 2700 years ago to honor the greek God, Zeus. And the athletes manifested that super-natural, "greek god" like persona.
Today, olympic competitors like Hiroshi Hoketsu are true inspirations as they continually challenge our thinking about what's possible.
What do you think - will humans keep breaking our self-defined physical barriers?
