These Olympic athletes are changing the game — literally.
A slew of older women (or at least, “old” for the Olympics) have competed in the Milan Cortina Winter Games, including a 42-year-old figure skater, a 52-year-old snowboarder and a 46-year-old skier. They’re proving to the world that they’re the ones who decide when they’re ready to retire – not anyone else.
“I never think about the age when I’m racing,” said snowboarder Claudia Riegler, who was booted from the Austrian national team when she was 30 for being over the hill. “They told me I was too old. I said to myself, ‘No, that can’t be the truth.’ I had to find my own truth,” she continued, according to NBC.
The 52-year-old said age has the opposite effect of slowing her down – instead, it motivates her. “I don’t even know how old the girls are,” she quipped of her fellow competitors. “I feel like I’m one of them.”
Figure skater Deanna Stellato-Dudek, who represents Canada, made history in 2024 when she became the oldest woman to win a world title in any figure skating category when she and her skating partner won the world championship in Montreal.
Stellato-Dudek joked that she is a “whole legal human being older” than most of her counterparts in the rink, according to The New York Times. The minimum age to compete was raised to 17 after a doping scandal involving 15-year-old Russian skater Kamila Valieva during the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
Still, the 42-year-old is all too familiar with the double standards of competing in such a high-profile arena.
“When I do well, I am celebrated more than my younger counterparts,” she said. “But when we do poorly, there are so many trolls DMing me about my body, my face, my hair, that I’m not strong enough.”
And 46-year-old Sarah Schleper, who represents Mexico, may have become the oldest Alpine skier to compete in the Olympics, but she also made history for a different reason: She and her 18-year-old son were the first mother-son duo to compete at the same Games.
“Racing with your son – I guess that’s better than a gold medal,” she said, per NBC.