With 20 gold medals, Iichi Marumo is the oldest speedskater in the world

Iichi Marumo had been ice skating since he was some 10 years old, but he didn’t compete in his first race until nearly eight decades later, at the age of 86. Now, at 95, he has 20 gold medals to his name as a speedskating champion in his age bracket. There aren’t many like him–as he gets older, the skating categories rise with him; according to The New York Times, the Japan Skating Federation has created three new ones since he started just to keep up–and while he’s briefly retired from the sport to heal from an injury, he hopes to make it to the next bracket soon, for ages 100 and over.

Marumo’s life as a competitive skater began when a friend convinced him to try it, since he’d probably “get a medal just for showing up,” the Times reported. While it seems extraordinary, for Marumo the dedication for the sport is actually one more in a long list of fascinating lifetime feats.

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As a young man of just 15, Marumo was recruited and trained for a kamikaze mission during World War II, but was never deployed. He returned home to his family’s farm, and noticed an unusual sight: celery. The vegetable was famously difficult to grow in Japan, but somehow it appeared and Marumo figured out a way to continue its life. It became not just an agricultural marvel but a new cash crop, the Times reported, adding that by the time Marumo was in his forties, “In 1970, Emperor Hirohito recognized Mr. Marumo with an award for promoting agriculture.”

In his fifties, Marumo also was part of his local city council, where he “convinced leaders to build the city’s own speedskating rink,” the Times also shared. And in his later years, Marumo has kept busy not just with speedskating, but with editing a Japanese literary magazine of the poetry form tanka, “a thirty-one-syllable poem, traditionally written in a single unbroken line. A form of waka, Japanese song or verse, tanka translates as “short song,” and is better known in its five-line, 5/7/5/7/7 syllable count form,” according to the Academy of American Poets.

As of January 7, 2024, Marumo holds the Guinness World Record for “Oldest Competitive Speed Skater.” At 95, competitive speed skating looks a little different, of course, and Marumo’s times are slower, but it’s always important to him to finish–whether it’s a three-minute spin during a 500-meter race or, after a fall in January on an outdoor track during a blizzard, a 17-minute crawl to the finish line where he refused to give up. Though he has briefly retired to undergo a hernia operation, the Times reported, he’s thinking of getting back out there after he recovers.

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Even so, he’s become a beloved figure in Japan, where senior sports are having a moment of popularity. Indeed, there is an entire senior sports festival dedicated “to increas[ing] the rate at which elderly people in Tokyo participate in sports, thereby contributing to maintaining and improving their health,” the festival writes, and the country’s senior soccer and breakdancing clubs have garnered international attention.

In Japan, seniors like Marumo are encouraged to have long, active lives–and they do. Indeed, their population regularly has “the oldest population in the world,” according to the World Economic Forum and, as of 2023 at least, “almost a third of its population is over 65 – an estimated 36.23 million.”

So Marumo’s energy has the potential to galvanize a large audience of not just seniors, but of anyone who might be watching. He’s a hardworking athlete, after all. The Times quotes Japan Association for Winter Masters Sports director Kenji Takai, who says that Marumo “stands out as the poster boy of senior winter sports in Japan and maybe the world…he’s inspiring people to try to do what he’s doing.”

As people like Marumo know, to have a long life, you have to keep living.