Age does not stop her – Weia is 70 and takes another world record

The Dutch Athlete jumped 1.33 metres to take the record in the women’s over 70 category. She passed her 70th birthday in March 2020, eager to break records in the new category. Covid lockdowns paused sporting fixtures just a day later and prevented her attempting to add to records.

Weia now has 40 records at national, European and world level. This is the 23rd world record. Records include those in high jump, heptathlon and javelin and she’s also recorded theworld’s best score in double heptathlon (which is not IAAF recognised).

Weia loves statistics and told us this was her 217th high jump competition and 666th entry in a meet. She’s already broken the national javelin record this year.

40 years vegan

Weia has been vegan for close to forty years.

“Earlier in 1982 we learned that for dairy products slaughter is necessary, otherwise cows do not ‘give’ milk. The article about this had as conclusion that some meat eating is necessary, but our conclusion was the contrary: no milk and cheese is the best solution.

“It took several months and a long distance walk (1300 km in 8 weeks) and a lot of bread with cheese to say: now! At the time we did not know that it was called veganism what we were going to do and that there were others making the same choices. Soon we learned to know some of them, there were only about thirty at that time in our country.”

Weia’s profile

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