On the wall of Hiromu Inada's house hangs a certificate confirming that he is the oldest Ironman athlete in the world, but this 87-year-old Japanese wants to keep beating his age and trains on an exercise bike to pursue the goal of competing when I reached 90.
In 2018, days before her 86th birthday, Inada traveled to Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, and set a new record for the oldest person to complete the Ironman World Championship, an achievement unattainable for most people for decades. younger than him.
The cancellation of the test this October due to the crisis of the covid-19 pandemic has not diminished the ambitions of the athlete, who maintains his hard training schedule to be able to participate in Hawaii in 2021.
"My goal is the next World Cup in Hawaii," Inada assured from his gym in Chiba, east of Tokyo. "I will participate in it without a doubt, and without a doubt I want to break the world age record again. It is my current and most important goal."
The Ironman event is one of the toughest endurance events and requires athletes to swim 3.86 kilometers, cycle 180.25 kilometers and run 42.19 kilometers in marathon runs. Looking slim and tanned from hours of outdoor training, Inada would look like a man who has competed in endurance trials his entire life, but actually started playing sports after retiring.
After working for the Japanese public television network NHK, Inada started swimming and running, and bought her bicycle at the age of 69. A year later he competed in his first triathlon. Shortly after, his wife died and he turned the evidence into an obsession. At 82, in 2015, he participated in the test in Hawaii, with the goal of being the oldest athlete to complete the test on time, but he fell short, by very little: just five seconds they left him out.
The encouragement he received from those attending the test gave him the strength to participate again the following year and this time he did. It has a Guiness certificate to prove it. "Until then, I had thought about leaving it if it seemed to me that it had been enough, but from what I have in mind is that I can not leave it at all, and that I have an absolute duty to compete because, if not, I will feel bad for those who support me, "says Inada.
The athlete trains every day. He gets up at four thirty in the morning and at six goes to the pool. For him, the postponement of the event to next year is an opportunity to ease the pain in one of his knees and also to improve his training technique. "I am confident that I can try new things to keep fit," he assured, adding that he also hopes to be able to postpone the peak of his physical form until the dates when the test is held. "That's why I prefer to think that it has not been bad that the test is postponed."
