For the second blog post in a row, we have the same two milestone birthdays as last year, so we are again covering them both!
The first is Bakir Ben Aissa, the oldest living Moroccan Olympian, who is turning 94 today! Ben Aissa represented his country at two editions of the Olympic marathon, placing eighth and twelfth in 1960 and 1964 respectively. He won that event at the 1959 and 1963 Mediterranean Games and took gold in the 10,000 metres and silver in the 5,000 metres at the 1957 Pan-Arab Games. Originally a representative of France, he joined the Moroccan national team a few years after independence and did not retire from active competition until 1968.
(Garry Hoyt, pictured at The Inquirer and Mirror)
The second is Garry Hoyt, the oldest living Olympian to have represented Puerto Rico, who is also turning 94 today! Hoyt represented his country in three editions of the Olympic sailing tournament, beginning in 1968 when he was 10th in the Finn class. He then teamed up with Hovey Freeman to take part in the Tempest class in 1972 and 1976, placing 16th and 15th respectively. He had better luck in the Snipe class at the 1966 Central American and Caribbean Games, where he won the gold medal. By career, he was an advertising executive, businessman, and author on the topic of sailing.
Finally, to add another small update to this post as we did last time, Ralph Schlueter was able to confirm that the 1932 Belgian art competitor Fritz De Boever was indeed Fritz Camillus De Boever, born January 11, 1909, as we speculated in an earlier blog post. He also discovered that this Olympian died March 9, 1987, at the age of 78.