Her fare is elemental and consistent. Credit: Iryna Inshyna / Shutterstock.com
At 92, Italian jock Emma Maria Mazzenga continues to beryllium that property is nary obstruction to vitality aliases sporting achievement. Hailed arsenic nan fastest female successful nan world complete 90, she combines subject and equilibrium successful a manner that has drawn admiration from some scientists and athletics fans.
Her fare is elemental and consistent: plentifulness of vegetables, immoderate meat, food aliases eggs, pasta aliases rice, ne'er successful excess, and an occasional half solid of wine. She ne'er skips meals and avoids eating for respective hours earlier a race. Alongside this, she maintains a strict training routine. Two aliases 3 times a week she warms up, runs short repetitions and practises her racing distance, while connected different days she powerfulness walks.
Even during nan pandemic she refused to enactment still, moving on her hallway aliases astir her block. “I ne'er walk nan full time indoors,” she explained.
Fastest 92-year-old runner
The results speak for themselves. In 2023 she collapsed nan world grounds for nan 200 metres successful nan over-90s class pinch 51.47 seconds, and successful 2024 improved her ain people pinch 50.33. These achievements person secured her spot arsenic a starring fig successful masters athletics and arsenic a taxable of technological research. Studies by universities successful Italy and nan United States recovered her cardiorespiratory capacity matches that of a 50-year-old, while her musculus fibres lucifer those of personification successful their twenties.
Mazzenga began competing astatine 19 while studying biologic sciences, but stopped astatine 28 to raise her family. She returned to athletics astatine 53 and has not looked back, often reminding others that “it is ne'er excessively precocious to start”.
Beyond records and medals, she champions nan value of regular movement, listening to nan assemblage and maintaining balance. “Sport keeps maine alive,” she said, a connection that challenges stereotypes of ageing and offers dream for progressive longevity.