Sports Archives - Infinite Women

All American Red Heads

A nationally known women’s basketball team, the All American Red Heads formed in 1936 in Cassville, Missouri, with Connie Mack Olson as its founder and coach.

Connie Dennison

Before Connie Dennison passed away in 2018 at the age of 102, the Scot was believed by many to be the world’s oldest yoga teacher.

Lori Locust

American National Football League coach

Harriette Thompson ran her first San Diego Marathon when she was 76 and continued doing so every year except 2013—which the then-90-year-old only missed due to a recurrence of the oral cancer she had been fighting since 1986.

Edwina Brocklesby

Edwina Brocklesby, who would go on to be the U.K.’s oldest Ironman triathlete and founder and director of Silverfit, which promotes physical activity among older people, “didn’t do any exercise at all until I was 50.”

Gladys Burrill

Gladys Burrill was 86 when she ran her first marathon in 2004. She would go on to complete four more Honolulu Marathons, earning the nickname “Gladyator” and setting a world record for the oldest woman to finish a marathon on December 12, 2010 at age 92 with a time of nine hours, 53 minutes and 16 seconds.

Amy Appelhans Gubser

In 2024, 55-year-old Amy Appelhans Gubser made headlines like “This Grandmother Swam 30 Miles Through Shark-Infested Waters to Set a Record.”

Madonna Buder

Sister Madonna Buder, also known as the “Iron Nun,” competed in her first triathlon in 1982 at age 52—and then did around 400 more over the next four decades.

Melinda Cockshutt

The month after her 50th birthday, Australian athlete Melinda Cockshutt won the women’s division of the 2024 Ultraman Australia triathlon, as well as being the oldest woman to complete the race.

Hulda Crooks

Hulda Crooks earned the nickname “Grandma Whitney” for climbing the continental U.S.’s tallest peak, Mount Whitney, 23 times between 1962 and 1991. She was 66 during her first ascent. She also climbed Japan’s Mount Fuji in 1987, becoming the oldest woman to scale it at age 91.