The story of Kathy Bergen’s decorated track and field career began in the pages of AARP magazine, which is another way of saying it didn’t start until after she turned 50. In the years since, Bergen has cemented her status as a legend in the world of masters athletics, which is open to competitors aged 35 and older. She was inducted into the USA Track & Field Masters Hall of Fame in 2008, and was named the top female masters athlete in 2015. Earlier this month at a ceremony in Orlando, Florida, Bergen received her highest honor, as she was named the top masters athlete of the year by USATF.
The accolades are deserved for someone who has broken so many world records that she loses count. “Off the top of my head, I’m thinking 24, 28. I’m not really sure,” Bergen said in a phone interview. (It’s 28, but who’s counting?)
“In the last 12 years, I’ve broken so many records, it’s crazy,” she added.
Bergen, who will turn 82 on Christmas Eve, notched five more world records last year. She set three indoor records at an event in Houston, posting times of 10.02 in the 60m and 35.66 in the 200m to go along with a record-setting mark of 1.2m in the high jump. Months later at an event in Marble Falls, Texas, Bergen was at it again, setting a pair of outdoor world records in the 100m with a time of 16.62 seconds and the high jump with a leap of 1.15 meters. She broke two more outdoor world records this year at an event in Santa Ana, California, in June, improving her time in the 100m to 16.26 and setting a new mark in the 200m with a time of 35.34. Bergen has watched many of her previous world records fall, but she still claims the top indoor times in the 60m (9.21) and 200m (31.86) for the 70-74 age group, which she set in 2010 and 2012, respectively. Her indoor high jump world record for the 75-79 age category, 1.25 meters, has stood for more than five years.
That Bergen was able to compete at all in the pandemic-marred 2020 was something of its own feat. She credits her husband Bert, with whom she has five children and 13 grandchildren, for finding the two events amid all of the disruptions.
It was Bert who played a similar role nearly 30 years ago, when he helped guide Kathy to her first meet. She was 54 and Bert was 56 – or, as Kathy puts it, “that ripe old age when you start getting AARP magazine.” Bert, who was a high jumper in high school, came across an article promoting the California senior games, which were to be held at nearby Occidental College. “He said, ‘Why don’t we give it a try? Anybody can run,’” Kathy recalled.
Up to that point, Kathy’s athletic experience was limited. She dabbled in intramural basketball and volleyball while growing up in Brooklyn, but her sporting endeavors stopped after high school. And although Bergen said she was always fast as a kid, and that she became a good tennis player after she and Bert relocated to California in 1972, her background did not exactly portend a hall of fame future. Nor did it necessarily give her reason to expect immediate success when she first stepped on the track at Occidental.
Bergen won both the 50m and 100m races that day – from a standing start and in a pair of sneakers, no less – and from there, she was off. “It was like, oh boy, I found a new love,” Bergen said.
She learned how to use starting blocks and bought a pair of sprinting spikes, as she and Bert searched for other meets in California. Kathy eventually showcased her dominance in other events, adding the 200m, high jump and javelin to her repertoire.
There are late bloomers in sports – Ian Wright playing Sunday League football until he was 21, Hakeem Olajuwon taking up basketball at 15 – and then there are athletes like Bergen, who began collecting gold medals when most of their peers were counting gray hairs. “When I turned 70, I was kind of spinning my wheels,” she said. “I was OK. I’d win a fair amount, but I wasn’t that great.” Not content with merely placing first, Bergen sought the assistance of a track and field coach named Eric Dixon. “I must admit I thought she was crazy at first because when we first met, she told me she wanted to set world records,” Dixon said. “But I’m always up for a challenge. Plus, I saw that she had the right attitude.” He developed a training program for Bergen, who said that the new regimen helped make her world class. Dixon coaches other masters record holders and some standout collegiate athletes, but he said few rival Bergen. “Kathy is among the top of my list,” he said.
There are other masters athletes who have unlocked their elite abilities deep into adulthood. Brian Hankerson learned of his hidden athletic prowess when he was trying to help his kids discover their own. Driven by the fatherly impulse to lead by example, Hankerson, 45 at the time, began to train with his son and daughter while they competed in track and field. “I would run with them and encourage them. ‘Hey, if I can do it, so can you,’” Hankerson said.
Attending a regional meet in the Miami area around that time, Hankerson took note of some contemporaries who weren’t there as spectators. “They were called ‘masters’. I had never heard of it, but as I listened to the age groupings, I thought, ‘Wow, these guys are my age,’” he said. “I was out there running with my kids and I thought, ‘I bet I could do what they’re doing.’”
He gave it a go the following year, competing in high jump and sprints. At a meet in Clermont, Florida, a fellow competitor recognized that Hankerson was a diamond in the rough. “He asked me if I had ever tried long jump,” Hankerson said. “I told him no, and he said that with my leaping ability and speed, I could be great at long jump.”
Hankerson, now 62, has gone on to establish himself as one of the preeminent long and high jumpers on the senior circuit. He will compete at the masters world championships in Finland next summer, and has designs on setting his first world records in the coming year. Hankerson is currently just on the cusp of shattering the marks for long jump (6.07 meters) and high jump (1.78 meters) for the 60-64 age group. “Those records are definitely doable,” he said.
Hankerson has posted a number of record-setting marks at the National Senior Games, billed as “the largest multi-sport event in the world for seniors”. The 2022 games, postponed a year late due to the pandemic, will be held in Hankerson’s hometown of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he and Bergen will be joined by thousands of other athletes over the age of 50 competing in 20 different sports.
Philipp Djang will be there. He’s only missed one edition of the senior games since 2005, racking up more than 20 event records in swimming races across four age groups. Djang, 67, swam as a kid growing up in New Mexico, where he still lives, and had what he described as a “mediocre” collegiate career in the pool at a small university in Oregon. He stayed fit throughout his 35-year career as a scientist in the US Army, playing racquetball and competing in triathlons and marathons, but he had largely given up swimming until 1999, when he turned 45 and a friend persuaded him to participate in a meet held in Long Beach, California. “I got into the pool, swam a race and I accidentally broke a world record,” Djang said, modestly referring to his 1:03.39 time in the 100m backstroke. “I had no expectations at all of doing anything like that.”
That performance was the springboard for a swimming career highlighted by 10 individual world records and 15 US masters records. The success has given Djang a rosy view of the natural aging process. Every five years offers a new age group to conquer – and new records to target. “I look forward to getting older,” he said. It’s why Djang was especially gutted to miss out on a year of competitions in 2020, with his 65th birthday falling shortly before the pandemic. “I would have done really well, but everything got shut down,” Djang said. “You only turn 65 once.”
Bergen concedes that her record-setting days are likely finished in the 80-84 age group, but that doesn’t mean she is done making history. Just last month, 105-year-old Julia Hawkins set a world record in the 100m with a time of 1:02.95, perhaps offering a glimpse of what lies ahead for Bergen, who vows that she will “keep doing this forever”.
But Bergen’s career invites an obvious question: does she ever wonder what might have been had she realized her abilities earlier in life? After all, a high jump coach once told her that if she had started in high school, she may well have been an Olympian. “I’m very flattered by his estimate,” she said. “But if I had, I wouldn’t be doing it now.”