Thursday 24 September 2015

105-year-old Japanese man sets 100m world record

Hidekichi Miyazaki has created a new Guinness world record on Wednesday September 23 in track and field.

The 105-year-old Japanese runner who has four children and ten grandchildren, completed the 100-meter sprint in 42.22 seconds on Wednesday, entering the record books as the world's oldest competitive sprinter.

"I slept very well last night," Miyazaki  told CNN on Thursday. "I was really moved that something like this can happen."

"I'm not happy with the time," Miyazaki told AFP

"I started shedding tears during the race because I was going so slowly. Perhaps I'm getting old!" Indeed, so leisurely was his pace that Bolt could have run his world record of 9.58 four times, or practically completed a 400 metres race  a fact not lost on Miyazaki.

"I'm still a beginner, you know," he said, grinning from ear to ear. "I'll have to train harder. Training was going splendidly, so I had set myself a target of 35 seconds. "I'm proud of my health," added Miyazaki, the poster boy for Japan's turbo-charged geriatrics in a country with one of the world's highest life expectancies.

'Tip-top' condition

"My brain might not be the sharpest but physically I'm tip-top. I've never had any health problems. The doctors are amazed by me." Asked about Bolt's latest heroics at last month's athletics world championships in Beijing, Miyazaki screwed up his nose and said with a chuckle: "He hasn't raced me yet! I would still love to compete against him," said Miyazaki, who loses valuable seconds because he cannot hear the starter's gun go off.

"Two or three years ago Bolt came to Japan and said he wanted to meet me. There was a call about it but I was out and he left without meeting me. I felt deeply sorry." Miyazaki, who was born in 1910, only took up running in his early 90s and prepares for races by taking a sneaky catnap.
He stands just five feet tall and weighs in at 42 kilograms He trains religiously by popping a kilogram weight into a rucksack and going for daily walks around his local park in Kyoto, where he now lives.





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