You have fit aging and you have top fit aging. Athlete Rietje Dijkman (82) is a living example of this. The eighty years have now passed, but that does not stop her from still several times a week on the athletics track of the Hilversum athletics club GAC. And how: she has several Dutch, European and even world records to her name in almost all areas. “The Dutch records are certainly more than a hundred”, she says proudly.
Record-eater Straw – NH Nieuws
She just doesn’t know the exact amount of records by heart. “Go google me,” she laughs. “It may sound very snobbish, but there are just too many of them.” She ran her last four records at the past indoor championships. “Two European and two world records.”
But how can you sport so many records together? Athletics sets new records every five years of life. For example, Rietje has records in the age category 75+, but certainly also in her current competition 80+. “In the Netherlands I no longer have any competitors there, but I know them all at the world championships.”
“I didn’t start athletics until I was 40, after raising my three boys on my own”
Yet the run-up that Rietje has had towards all her records does not sound very logical: “I only started athletics when I was forty, after I had raised my three boys almost alone.”
That late start may be her secret, according to the athletic veteran. “Many people who start athletics at a young age stop around their forties. Then they get injuries that I never suffered before.”
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Straw Dijkman still sports plenty
Straw Dijkman still sports plenty
Straw Dijkman still sports plenty
Humble
Rietje responds humbly to all questions about her records. “I’m just lucky. Someone who ends up in a wheelchair doesn’t choose that either.” With every record she runs or jumps, she keeps that to herself. “It’s great if you can go on stage, but after that I just keep going.”
Although she secretly still dreams of a very specific record. “If I stay healthy, I want to live to be a hundred and then run the record in the hundred meters. That is now at forty seconds”, while Rietje now takes seventeen seconds over the same distance. So she has good papers, you might say. “But I have to live, so I want to.”