The world’s oldest person plans carry the Olympic torch for 100 metres in Japan this May as the pandemic-delayed games finally get under way. Kane Tanaka, 118, will be pushed in her wheelchair for most of her stretch of the torch relay, but said she wished to walk the final few steps to the next torchbearer.
The Japanese woman, who has twice survived cancer, lived through two global pandemics and loves fizzy drinks, will take the flame as it passes through Shime, in her home prefecture of Fukuoka.
“It’s great she reached that age and she can still keep up an active lifestyle — we want other people to see that and feel inspired, and not to think age is a barrier,” said her grandson Eiji Tanaka, who is in his 60s. He added that his grandmother has ‘always loved festivals’ and wants to break the record for the oldest person to have ever lived.
Previous record holders for the oldest Olympic torchbearers include Aida Gemanque of Brazil, who lit the torch at the 2016 Rio Summer Games age 106, and table tennis player Alexander Kaptarenko, who ran with the torch at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games at 101 years old.
That record is currently held by the late French woman Jeanne Louise Calment, who died at the age of 122 years and 164 days old in 1997, according to the Guinness World Records.
However, Tanaka does hold one record. She reached the all-time Japanese age record in September last year, usurping Nabi Tajima, who died aged 117 years old in April 2018.
Life of a super-centenarian
Tanaka was born in 1903 — the same year Wright brothers successfully completed the world’s first powered flight. She went on to have four children with the rice shop owner she married at 19 years old, and worked in the family store until she was 103. She has five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
She is almost as old as the modern Olympic Games, which began in 1896.
When the Olympics were last held in Tokyo in 1964, Tanaka was 61 years old.
Tanaka, who now lives in a nursing home, typically wakes at 6 am, and “enjoys playing the strategic board game, Othello,” — she’s also a fan of fizzy drinks.
