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Stalwarts keep on coming back for more
Some Olympic athletes have been competing for so many years that they deserve a gold watch for long service as much as a medal.
Some Olympic athletes have been competing for so many years that they deserve a gold watch for long service as much as a medal.
They may no longer run as swiftly, jump as high or be as strong as their rivals but they never give up. The Olympic flame, lit decades ago in some cases, still burns brightly in their hearts.
Canadian Ian Millar is a shining example.
The 57-year-old show jumper from Perth, Ontario, will be competing at the Olympics for the eighth time in a career that started at the 1972 Munich Games and has yet to bring him a medal.
It would have been his ninth Olympics had Canada not boycotted Moscow in 1980.
"As Ronald Reagan said: 'I will not hold my opponents' youth and inexperience against them'," Millar quipped in a recent Canadian newspaper interview.
"I started doing this because it was fun when I was a young boy and it's still just as much fun as it ever was, so why would I ever stop?"
His competition record makes compatriot Cindy Ishoy, also an equestrian contender, look almost like a newcomer as she prepares to ride out in her fourth Olympics.
But she was also around in Munich in 1972.
The extraordinary German canoeist Birgit Fischer, a mother of two, can match that as she comes out of retirement once again to compete in her sixth Games at the age of 42 after winning seven gold medals to date.
OTTEY'S SEVEN
Jamaican sprinter Merlene Ottey, who made her debut in Moscow 24 years ago, can match her for longevity. She is competing in the Athens Games for Slovenia in what will be her seventh appearance.
She, like Fischer, had already run in three Games before this year's youngest female Olympian -- 13-year-old Djibouti runner Zeinab Mohamed Khaireh according to the official Athens database -- had even been born.
Ottey is a phenomenon, set to become the only woman track and field athlete ever to run in seven Games after pulling level with long-retired Briton Tessa Sanderson and Romanian Lia Monoliu in Sydney four years ago.
The sports that stand out for Olympic longevity are seldom stadium fillers: sailing, equestrian and shooting events all figure large in the lists of repeat contenders.
Austrian yachtsman Hubert Raudaschl stands alone as a nine-times Olympian in a career spanning more than three decades from 1964 to 1996.
The only others with eight Olympics to their name are sailors and horse riders. Shooting and fencing also see familiar faces coming back every four years.
But, according to organisers, seven table tennis players in Athens have also competed in every Olympics since the sport made its Games' debut in 1988.
There are even some comparative old timers among the gymnasts, those shining lights who are so often burned out once they approach the end of their teenage years.
Long-limbed Russian Svetlana Khorkina, the self-styled 'queen of the asymmetric bars' with the bewitching smile and alluring personality, is on her third Olympics in search of a third gold at the age of 25.
"My strongest rival is myself," she said recently.
