Recently we noted the death of Uruguayan sailor Félix Sienra, born January 21, 1916, who was, to the best of our knowledge, the oldest living (and longest-lived) Olympian when he died on January 30, 2023. As we have mentioned, however, there are over 2200 Olympians, non-starters, and demonstration event competitors born between 1913 and 1932 for whom we have no confirmation on whether they are alive or deceased. In addition, there are 293 individuals who participated in the Games in 1928, 1932, and 1936 for whom we have no information on their date, or even year, of birth. Today we want to focus on the 44 Olympians who would be older than Félix Sienra if they were still alive. Three of them were non-starters: Shigeo Takagi and Masuzo Maeda, born July 28, 1913 and June 29, 1914 respectively, who were reserves with Japan’s Olympic water polo squads, and Hussein Ezzat, born in 1915, who was a reserve with the Egyptian football team in 1936.

It should be noted that discussing these individuals in no way represents any belief on the part of Oldest Olympians that these athletes are still alive; we simply cannot confirm that they are deceased. In fact, we find it highly unlikely that any Olympian who is between the age of 107 and 109 would have escaped our attention completely. It remains, however, an important caveat and is always a possibility: language barriers, poor media coverage of older athletes, and desire for privacy from a generation when the Games were not as big as they are now all contribute to the chance that someone may have eluded our radar. In the past, several Olympic centenarians have reached that milestone with little public fanfare, sometimes not being revealed until their death. We feel, therefore, that it is important to share this list to make our research methods a little more public and subject to scrutiny, perhaps solving a case or two along the way.

Mie Muraoka represented Japan in the 4×100 metres track relay at the 1932 Los Angeles Games.

1913

Zenjiro Watanabe represented Japan in figure skating’s singles event at the 1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen Olympics.

1914

Jaime Ucar represented Uruguay in foil fencing at the 1948 London Olympics.

1915

For our next entry, we will be looking into those Olympians who may still be alive and were born between Félix Sienra and the current oldest living Olympian, Yvonne Chabot-Curtet. We hope that you will join us!