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szdaily -> Kaleidoscope -> 
World’s oldest living person at 118 to carry Olympic torch
    2021-03-08  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

MANY world records have been set and broken since the Olympic Game’s modern inception in 1896. Now, in 2021, another Olympic record is set to be broken. This time around it’s a 118-year-old woman, the world’s oldest living person, who’s breaking records as the oldest Olympic torchbearer.

The Japanese woman, Kane Tanaka, will take the flame as it passes through Shime in her home prefecture of Fukuoka.

For most of the 100-meter-or- so trek, Tanaka will be pushed in a wheelchair by her family. However, the supercentenarian is determined to walk the final few steps, as she passes the torch to the next runner.

Tanaka was born in 1903. This was the same year the Wright brothers successfully completed the world’s first powered flight. She married a rice shop owner at 19 years old, had four children, and worked in the family store until she was 103.

She’s the grandmother to five, great-grandmother to eight, and twice a cancer survivor, and lived through the 1918 Spanish flu and two world wars.

In 1964 when the Olympic Games was last held in Tokyo, Tanaka was 61 years old. Counting both the summer and winter editions of the games, this year’s Olympics will be the 49th of her lifetime.

Tanaka, who now lives in a nursing home, enjoys playing the strategic board game Othello.

In 2019, the Guinness Book of World Records certified Tanaka as the world’s oldest living person.

Previous record holders for the oldest Olympic torchbearers include Aida Gemanque of Brazil, who lit the torch at the 2016 Rio Summer Games at the age of 106, and table tennis player Alexander Kaptarenko, who ran with the torch at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games at 101 years old.

(SD-Agencies)

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