Four men at least 90 years old composed a relay team for the first time in history to set three world records at the USA Track and Field Masters Outdoor Championships on Sunday.
Champion Goldy Sr., 97, Orville Rogers, 96, Roy Englert, 92, and Charles Ross, 91, ran a 4x100m relay in 2 minutes, 22.37 seconds at the Winston-Salem, N.C., meet. Charles Boyle, 91, stepped in for Goldy in the 4x400m and the 4x800m, where they ran 12:41.69 and 28:17.10, respectively, according to USA Track and Field. (Ages for Boyle and Englert are different on the results pages, 90 and 91, respectively).
“The crowd rose to its feet with applause and cheers,” and the end of their 4x400m, the final track event of the meet, USATF wrote in a press release.
Features have been written on all of the runners.
Goldy was a Methodist minister who began his track career in his 70s and said his goal was to run the 100m when he was 100, according to the Edmonton Journal in 2005.Rogers set six Masters world records over three days last year, 11 months after suffering a stroke, according to USATF.
Englert began running in his basement for exercise at age 50 and didn’t compete until his 60s, according to the Washington Post in 2009.
Englert was born in Nashville in 1922, participated with the Navy in the D-Day invasion at Normandy during World War II, went to Columbia Law School, worked for the Treasury Department and retired in 1996.
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“The most frustrating thing is I get slower every year and I really don’t know why,” he said, smiling. “I train all the time.”
Ross fought in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War and is in the Army Ranger Hall of Fame, according to MastersTrack.com.
Boyle spent 32 years at NASA and has written a space adventure novel and a children’s picture book, according to WALK! magazine in 2007.
