An 80th birthday can mean many different things for different people.
For some whippersnappers it is another day to go for a hike or get out into the garden, while for others it can be a more subdued affair inside a care centre. For West Vancouver’s Christa Bortignon, however, age 80 arrived with a very specific set of challenges: a whole new list of world records to break.
The super senior took up track and field at age 72, inspired by an article in the North Shore News about another North Shore track star, Olga Kotelko. Bortignon, a former competitive tennis player, hit the ground running and hasn’t looked back since, setting numerous age-group world records along the way. World Masters Athletics updated their records on March 7, 2017, and Bortignon’s name is on the list eight times, including outdoor records in the 400 m, triple jump, pentathlon and heptathlon as well as the 80-m and 400-m hurdles, and indoor records in the pentathlon and 60-m hurdles. The records are all for the W75 age group, however, and with Bortignon turning 80 on Jan. 29, she’s got a new set of standards to chase down. And she’s going after them at full speed.
“I like a challenge,” says Bortignon, still razor sharp. “I think it’s nice to have goals and challenges in life. When you turn 80 you think, is this it?”
When the records list is updated next, they’ll have to add Bortignon’s name at least a couple more times. Bortignon’s assault on the W80 age group began March 11-12 in Toronto at the Canadian Masters Track and Field Championships where she set a new world record in the long jump, her leap of 3.02 m topping the old mark by 10 centimetres, and in the triple jump where her 6.91 m effort blew away the old record of 6.33 m. For good measure she also set new Canadian records in the 50 m, 60 m and 200 m sprints.
“That went well,” she said of her first shot at the W80 group. Three days after returning home from Toronto she was on a plane for an 11-hour flight to compete in the World Masters Indoor Championships running from March 19-25 in Daegu, South Korea.
There, competing alongside 4,200 athletes from around the world, Bortignon pushed her own new records farther, scoring 3.17 m in the long jump and 7.09 m in the triple jump.
“It was really well organized,” she says about the Korean event. “What impressed me most was the cleanliness. You don’t find a piece of paper, a cigarette butt, anything, anywhere. Nowhere. And the transportation system is just absolutely fantastic.”
There was a bit of a problem with the track, which hindered her attempts at new sprinting records.
“They had a banked track, it was pretty steep,” she says. “In one of my sprints I was in lane six, the outside lane, and I actually had to hold on to the railing before falling over. … So my times weren’t great. I mean, they were still Canadian records, but it wasn’t my best.”
While Bortignon loved Korea, Korea loved her right back. Out of all of the athletes at the event, Bortignon was selected for a special tour of an ancient village that was filmed by a Korean television station. The tour came with a special surprise.
“They asked us at the end if we would like to pose in the costume,” she says. “These are the actual costumes the king and queen used to wear, so it was quite an honour. The headpiece for me was really heavy – 12 pounds. I don’t know how the queen could have walked in that all day.”
It was an honour to put it on, but also a relief when she got to take it off – Bortignon is not planning on adding the costume to her everyday wardrobe.
“I’m glad we don’t have to wear them,” she says with a laugh. “There’s some stuff they put on underneath and then put this over it and you have to put your hands under the cover there and take your shoes off. … For our times, we’re not used to this. We’re much more liberal.”
Less than a week after returning from Korea, Bortignon was back on the track in Kamloops for the B.C. Masters Indoor Championships. There she pushed her jumps even farther, 3.28 m in the long and 7.42 m in the triple, and just for fun set a new W80 Canadian record of 6.76 m in the shot put.
“I’m not a thrower, but I have to do it for multi-events so whenever I’m not busy that day I try to do a throwing record,” she says.
With that – her third meet in two provinces and two continents within the span of three weeks – Bortignon says she is ready for a break. Not too long though, as more records beckon, including outdoor marks and some pretty fast times in the sprints. She’ll have to push hard for those, however, as American Irene Obera has laid down some fast times in the 80+ group, including 16.81 in the outdoor 100 m.
“It’s not going to be a walk in the park,” Bortignon says. “I have to really hustle.”
Bortignon is hoping to nab records in the 100 m, 200 m, and 400 m races, a rare trio that she held concurrently for a while in the W75 group.
“I think I want to go and work on my 400 maybe,” she says. “I was the only athlete, male or female, to have the records in 100, 200 and 400 at the same time. Very few people do that – either you’re a sprinter or you’re a middle-distance runner.”
There are, however, limitations to how much she can push her body.
“I think I have to give up the hurdles,” she says. “I had a problem with my hip last year.”
Bortignon has a sponsorship agreement with North Shore Kia that helps with some of her expenses, but mostly her exploits are paid for out-of-pocket. It’s well worth it, she says, for what it does for her and others around her, including her two great-grandchildren, ages two and four.
“My little guy, the oldest one of the great-grandchildren, he wants to be a runner but his dad wants him to be a hockey player, of course,” she says, laughing again, adding that her biggest hope is to inspire seniors to be more active, just as Olga Kotelko once inspired her. Kotelko died in 2014 at the age of 95, but her name lives on, plastered all over the world record listings, mostly in the W90 and W95 age groups. Bortignon may one day be going after those marks too.
“(I’ll compete) as long as I can. I really enjoy doing it,” she says. “I’d really like to get more masters into it because it’s a cheap sport – all you need is a pair of runners and some pants. There are so many options: you can jump, you can run, you can throw. You can be a spectator, you can be an official, a volunteer. The greatest thing is you meet so many nice people.”
