Age is just a number: How Emma Mazzenga is redefining athletic longevity at 92 years old

Italian master runner Emma Maria Mazzenga, 90, in action during the women's 100m W90 category race, in San Biagio di Callalta, Treviso, Italy, May 4, 2024. (Remo Casilli/Reuters via CNN Newsource)

Emma Mazzenga is no ordinary 92-year-old. The Italian is an elite sprinter who has broken multiple world records in track and field.

Mazzenga, who was born in 1933, made global headlines in 2024 when she broke the 200-metre world indoor record in the over-90s age group, finishing the race in a time of 54.47 seconds. She still continues to race, both attempting to break records and enjoying the thrill of running.

“I just like the competition. And even now, maybe a little less than in the past, I still feel tense before each race,” she told CNN Sports, adding that she set a new 200m personal best of 50.34 seconds back in June.

Many people have wanted to know the secrets of her success and how someone her age has managed to stay fit and continue training at such a high level. Mazzenga said there isn’t a day that goes by when she doesn’t do some sort of physical activity – but this wasn’t something she did throughout her entire life, despite an early passion for sports.

“I have always loved playing sports. When I was in high school, when I was 14 or 15 years old, I played basketball. Then I went to university, and the president organized a team of female athletes, so I competed for the University of Padua for seven or eight years,” Mazzenga said.

“I was very good but I was certainly more suited for an individual sport, so I continued. I graduated while continuing to compete. But then, in 1963, I got married, and for 25 years, I had school and family, so I didn’t do anything.

“I went to the mountains, hiked, went skiing, but I gave up competitive sports and resumed in 1986 at age 53.

“Since 1986, I resumed training; then I also had a coach and I always trained three times a week – initially a couple of hours, now one hour a day.”

Emma is testament that it’s never too late to start again. Her apartment, where she lives alone on the outskirts of the historic city of Padova, is full of hundreds of medals and trophies that she has collected competing all over the world for the last 40 or so years.

One of her favourites is on her wall – a medal from the World Masters Athletics Championships in the W75 400-metre race from the United States: “It was the first one, the first world title in Sacramento in 2011.”

To achieve such success, Mazzenga follows a balanced diet without any specific strict restriction, enjoying small portions and a nightly glass of red wine.

“At five in the morning, I’m awake. I have breakfast and generally have a ham sandwich or salami sandwich and then do various things,” she says.

“I go outside, go for a walk, go shopping, do some cleaning around the house. Then I’ll generally have a snack, then some fruit and a couple of cookies.

“At 12, lunch of course, and I eat some pasta – 30 or 40 grams – and meat or fish and vegetables. In the afternoon, I read. I go to the movies because I have a multiplex here 200 metres away, so it is very convenient. Or maybe I’ll take the tram downtown.

“In the evening, I’ll eat some vegetables, and afterwards I’ll sit in front of the television and, more often than not, I’ll fall asleep.”

Physiological phenomenon

After reading about the nonagenarian’s record-breaking races, Simone Porcelli, an Italian professor of human physiology at the University of Pavia (located almost 19 miles south of Milan), contacted Mazzenga to be part of a study called the TRAJECTORAGE Project.

The Italian-based research project – headquartered at the University of Pavia with researchers from the Politecnico di Milano, University of Padova and Politecnico di Torino in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin and Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha in Toledo, Spain – aims to investigate the physiological mechanisms underlying the deterioration of neuromuscular function with age through long-term monitoring (every six to 12 months) of healthy people over 60.

The goal is to improve the knowledge of the relationship between the nervous system and skeletal muscle, while also understanding the protective role of physical exercise.

“As we age, we get slower, we were not as fast as we used to be. We don’t jump as high, for example, we don’t move enough and sometimes we are not (moving) that (much) physically, right? So that, you know, brings us to decline a little bit as we age,” Martino Franchi, one of the researchers based at the University of Padova, told CNN Sports.

“So what we want to understand with this study is: is there a point in our life where things start to go downhill?”

The researchers involved in the two-year study say Mazzenga is their “cherry on the cake” because she is the oldest and most active participant in the project, helping them understand why some people age faster than others.

The multi-world record holder was previously tested 18 months ago, and they found her cardiorespiratory fitness to be similar to that of someone in their 50s, and her muscle’s mitochondrial function to be as good as that of a healthy 20-year-old.

This month, Mazzenga was back in the hot seat at the University of Pavia labs, as CNN Sports went along to witness her undergoing tests over the course of a day. The scientists leading the project were keen to see if she had physiologically aged since the last round of tests.

A piece of Mazzenga’s muscle was collected from her quadriceps to check fiber size, capillarization, mitochondrial function, and single-fiber mechanics to determine the strength and speed of contraction. She also underwent a maximal cycling test, an ultrasound scan, and neuromuscular evaluations to determine her cardiovascular fitness, leg strength, and oxygen delivery efficiency.

Franchi said they were eager to see how Emma had changed since her last test 18 months ago. Her deep muscle architecture resembled that of a much younger person, similar to athletes tested for performance.

“I’ve never met someone like Emma,” Franchi noted, calling her a unique and “top-notch example.”

After the results came in, one thing was clear: Mazzenga had aged, as expected, but nowhere near as much as an average person. This anomaly is exactly what researchers wanted to understand – why her decline is so minimal compared to typical aging patterns and what mechanisms inside the muscle might explain this resilience.

“(Mazzenga) will give us a reference point that we will use as a comparison to look back, maybe on the general population and understanding, if the same traits that we see on Emma can be found on some people. And if those are related to either, you know, like somebody that found the Fountain of Youth and we don’t know where it is yet or if this is related to exercise and physical activity.”

Still, for Mazzenga, she continues working out or training three days a week, but she says the secret lies in something more basic.

“I go for a walk here in the neighborhood, or I go downtown. In short, I move. I never stay a whole day in the house unless it is weather that prevents me going out.

“This is important. This is how it should be continued. And above all – do not isolate yourself. (It’s been) a year plus (that) I started to attend some groups here in the neighborhood and also this morning I was there and we meet with different topics, we read some books in short so that we can find each other.

“It is very, very, very important.”

By Antonia Mortensen, CNN