West Vancouver’s Olga Kotelko didn’t take up competitive track and field until she was 77 years old.
But she made up for lost time.
Kotelko would set 30 world records for her “masters” age group in the 100- and 200-metre sprint, long jump, high jump, and hammer. She earned over 750 gold medals.
She was such a marvel that Vancouver writer Bruce Grierson made her the subject of a book, What Makes Olga Run?
Her feats gave her international renown — Grierson profiled her in the New York Times, and the BBC in London recently did a story.
Kotelko died Tuesday after suffering a brain hemorrhage at her home. She was 95 years old.
Kotelko was only five feet tall, and weighed about 125 pounds. But she was strong, determined, and had a lot of spirit.
“She was really something,” said Grierson.
“Anatomically she was really remarkable,” he said, which was why scientists wondered about what might be going on inside her body to defy the usual effects of age.
“There was something about her spirit, also, that was really infectious,” Grierson said.
“She was super optimistic, and always found a way to be enjoying herself.”
Kotelko was one of 11 children born to Ukrainian immigrants in Vonar, Sask., near Saskatoon. She grew up on a farm, where she formed a lifelong habit of eating right and staying in shape.
She married, had a daughter and became a teacher at Vonar’s one-room school. But she left Saskatchewan after her drunken husband held a knife to her throat.
“She hopped on the train in the night. She was actually pregnant with one of her daughters, and had the other one, who was eight or nine, with her. They landed at her sister’s place in New West, and she didn’t go back,” Grierson said.
She raised her daughters as a single parent, while going to night school to get her B.C. teaching certificate. In her 40s she took up tai chi and yoga, and after she retired from teaching she started playing slo-pitch softball, at the age of 70.
She rediscovered a love of competitive sport she had back in Saskatchewan, where she spent her summers playing baseball. When she left her slo-pitch team a few years later, a friend suggested she try track.
Grierson met her when she was 89, and was amazed at the intensity of her training regimen.
“She wasn’t an endurance athlete, she was a sprinter — explosive, short stuff,” he relates.
She is survived by her daughter Lynda and two grandchildren. She was predeceased by her daughter Nadine.
