Pushing 50 and Going for Gold
The oldest runner to qualify for the Olympics is in it to win.
HADERA, Israel, April 14, 2008 — -- Haile Satayin is the first to admit it: His job hurts. The constant battering of knees and compressing of joints during 26 grueling miles is torturous. It's much worse when you're pushing 50, he jokes.
He and his entourage of two had trotted up a sandy path in the only park in this working-class town in central Israel. Their morning training session was over and we talked under a canopy of eucalyptus. Satayin and his cohorts stretched and I talked.
At 47, the marathoner is the oldest runner to qualify for the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer by a good six years or so. I thought he might win the dubious title of oldest athlete at the games, until a friend told me of a 64-year-old Japanese equestrian.
But Satayin, who was born in Ethiopia and emigrated to Israel in 1991, is reluctant to talk about his age.
"No one's going to give me a head start in the race because of my age," he said, in a voice tinged with bitterness, "so what's the use in making a big deal out of it. I runs as fast as I can, every time, that's it."
In recent weeks, international attention has focused on marathoners after the announcement by Haile Gebresailase that he will not run in Beijing fearing that the city's pollution might permanently damage his lungs.
But Satayin says that not smog or age or heat will stop him from going.
I asked him what motivates a man to run professionally at his age, expecting boilerplate homage to God, country or competitive drive.
And Satayin indeed pays homage to those stock athletic motivations.
But scratch a little deeper and Satayin admits that it's a job, the only job he's ever had in Israel.
As the father of seven children, living in drug-infested projects pestered by the persistent rattling of the city's trains, he's been hoping to parlay his fame into a little fortune and a way out of the projects.
Yehiam Skittel, his former coach, drove us out to the runner's home in the projects beside the town's railroad tracks.
Satayin walked us in past the graffiti and the dented panel of mailboxes. We sidestepped an addict and crammed ourselves into an unlit elevator.
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