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We have covered many sports women in our magazine: some were trailblazers breaking social norms, some were the best in their fields, some won multiple gold medals. These women, sometimes with little support, began at an early age with nothing but grit and determination, pushing through barriers to emerge as the elite.
But what if life has passed you by? What if any potential you may have had now sits in the years in the past?
Betty Brussel would like you to hold her beer.
Born in 1924, she learned to swim in a canal at a young age in the Netherlands. At the age of fifteen the whole country fell under the rule of the Nazis. Swimming gave her a sense of freedom, a moment of brevity - that feeling never left her.
In 1959 she emigrated to Canada with her husband and three children. At the age of sixty-eight Betty returned to the water, this time the local pool. That sense of freedom returned, and a pacemaker due to a heart attack and a couple of bad accidents have not stopped her.
She is now 100 years old, and she still swims - her t-shirt states, 'You don't stop swimming when you get old, you get old when you stop swimming' - and she now holds five World Records in various speed times in her age group, three of which she recorded when she was ninety-nine. Professional swimmers, and the Olympic Elite do not do what she does.
But she genuinely isn't concerned with the awards - she has many - it is simply the joy of being in the water, and she has no intention of stopping.
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