6 ms·

119 Years Old and Winning Marathons–Or Not?

24 points by danso 7y ago

ErikAugust 7y ago
“Winning marathons”. That is truly clickbait. The question asked in the article is he as old as he claims, not whether he is winning any marathons. He hasn’t won any marathons, he would however be the world age group record holder because nobody of that age has ever completed one.
- 3JPLW 7y ago
  He is winning his age brackets (often 60+ or so).
- danso 7y ago
  I didn't watch the entire video, and via Google haven't found any specific mention of him winning a particular marathon, but he has apparently won running contests in his age group as a sprinter: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/sports/119-year-old-runner-world-masters-championships.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/sports/119-year-old-runne... > Singh carried two more documents. One listed him as the first-place finisher at 200 meters (50.26 seconds) for sprinters 100 and over at the 2014 Malaysian Masters Athletics Championships.
  - magashna 7y ago
    Wouldn't be too difficult considering others in his alleged age group are dead.
  - saalweachter 7y ago
    From that same article: > A school transfer certificate had been found. Based on the certificate, he said, Dharam Pal Singh was “78 or so.” And he was not illiterate. The age was corrected on Singh’s election card, but he continued to use an old card “to hide his age,” the civil servant said. Edit: Oh man, this is a fascinating Wikipedia edit history: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=785789045&oldid=783399458&title=Dharampal_Singh_Gudha https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=785789045&oldid=78... The information above was originally included in the "Controversy section", sourced from the NYT. On June 15 2017, an editor rephrased the Wikipedia section containing the above information, and reversed the order of the two sentences. However, when they did so, they moved the citation from the _end_ of the two sentences to the _middle_ of the two sentences. Later, on August 9 2017, a different editor removed the second sentence as unsupported (because it was no longer followed by a blue [number]). Thus was the information that some documentation supported an age of "78 or so" lost from Wikipedia.
narrator 7y ago
That guy has nothing on Li Ching-Yuen: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Ching-Yuen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Ching-Yuen 7ft tall old guy who is incredibly fit and agile with many witnesses claiming their grandparents knew him as an old man when they were children.
- _ph_ 7y ago
  A faszinating story to read. While reason clearly says that stories like this need to be fake, one never can stop wondering whether there aren't some people who by odd chance (or very good genes) live far longer than they should. I am a bit thinking about Methuselah's Children by Heinlein here. If natural lives way beyond 100 years would be possible, one would expect a few more documented cases beyond 120 years though. But still, this is faszinating just to speculate about.
  - narrator 7y ago
    Seems there are a lot of leads to go on for someone who wanted to dig around in Chinese archives: "He died from natural causes on 6 May 1933 in Kai Xian, Sichuan, Republic of China and was survived by his 24th wife, a woman of 60 years.[8][7] Li supposedly produced over 200 descendants during his life span, surviving 23 wives.[9][8] Other sources credit him with 180 descendants, over 11 generations, living at the time of his death and 14 marriages"
  - kazinator 7y ago
    > wondering whether there aren't some people who by odd chance (or very good genes) live far longer than they should. Exactly; death and aging are programmed. We know of hereditary conditions that cause premature aging and death; why can't the opposite exist, causing a human to age more like a tortoise.
    - _ph_ 7y ago
      Observation and logic unfortunately say, that while most people live between 70 and 90 years, the 110-120 years of the documented super-old might already be how far good genes can push the human life.
crispyambulance 7y ago
It makes me wonder, is it possible to determine the age of a living person with any accuracy by some kind of physical measurement or biological test? It seems that birth records and appearance are all we got to go on?
- snikeris 7y ago
  Telomere length is one such measurement.
  - dogma1138 7y ago
    No it’s not because people are born with different telomere lengths and telomeres do not shorten at the same rate or even at a predictable rate through your lifetime.
  - pergadad 7y ago
    Influenced by environmental factors, genetics and lifestyle. It can tell you how soon you'll die but not how old you are.
  - has2k1 7y ago
    I thought of telomere length too, but given that the person is an outlier in age and they are healthy would it still be as accurate a measure? I think the biological aspect that is the proxy for age should not affect the well-being of the person.
  - kazinator 7y ago
    Unless that individual's telomeres behave atypically, in direct relation to their longevity?
    - dogma1138 7y ago
      There is no typical behavior for telomeres. Even in humans they can lengthen under certain circumstances. They do overall shorten with age but without knowing what was your telomere basepair length at birth for a given tissue (as not only length varies between individuals it varies between different types of cells and between individual chromosomes) and tracking your telomeres throughout your life you can’t get any informative data for a given individual out of it.
mabbo 7y ago
I'm skeptical. The oldest man to ever live, Jiroemon Kimura, only lived to 116. Only 7 men have ever lived (confirmed) to 114 or older. Now here is someone who has the health and wellness of a much younger man, claiming to be the oldest man who's ever lived by 3 years (a huge outlier!). We should have a healthy dose of skepticism of such claims. Even Jeanne Calment is being re-examined based primarily on how much of an outlier she was at 122 years old, 3.5 years older than the next oldest person ever[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Scepticism_regarding_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Scepticism_rega...
- frogpelt 7y ago
  His claims remind me of this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A1i_Ng%E1%BB%8Dc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A1i_Ng%E1%BB%8Dc
apendleton 7y ago
I'm confused about the math here. This article is apparently current (published two days ago), and given that it's 2019, if he was indeed born in 1897, that would make him either 121 or 122, not 119, right?
- rm445 7y ago
  But the article is partly about a film documentary. Presumably the difference is the time for editing and release and he was/claimed to be 119 when it was filmed.
brink 7y ago
This is extremely hard to believe for obvious reasons. He's a 119 year old man, men typically live shorter lives. He can still run. He looks nowhere near 119. And this is all based on a year that he verbally declared off of the top of his head years ago since he was never given a birth certificate. The four pieces of paperwork "proof" he's providing don't really mean anything, it would just mean that he knowingly or unknowingly lied to an official.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
kasperni 7y ago
Yuri Deigin, the CEO of Youthereum Genetics wrote a fascinating article about why Jeanne Calment’s 122-year old longevity record may be fake. It is a long read in 3 parts [1][2][3] but reads like a really good detective story. [1] https://medium.com/@yurideigin/jaccuse-why-122-year-longevity-record-may-be-fake-af87fc0c3133 https://medium.com/@yurideigin/jaccuse-why-122-year-longevit... [2] https://medium.com/@yurideigin/more-evidence-for-jeanne-calments-identity-theft-hypothesis-26f7cece0cd2 https://medium.com/@yurideigin/more-evidence-for-jeanne-calm... [3] https://medium.com/@yurideigin/oh-jeanne-why-so-young-8e8019967bfc https://medium.com/@yurideigin/oh-jeanne-why-so-young-8e8019...

24 points by danso 7y ago

“Winning marathons”. That is truly clickbait. The question asked in the article is he as old as he claims, not whether he is winning any marathons. He hasn’t won any marathons, he would however be the world age group record holder because nobody of that age has ever completed one.

3JPLW 7y ago
He is winning his age brackets (often 60+ or so).
danso 7y ago
I didn't watch the entire video, and via Google haven't found any specific mention of him winning a particular marathon, but he has apparently won running contests in his age group as a sprinter: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/sports/119-year-old-runner-world-masters-championships.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/sports/119-year-old-runne... > Singh carried two more documents. One listed him as the first-place finisher at 200 meters (50.26 seconds) for sprinters 100 and over at the 2014 Malaysian Masters Athletics Championships.
- magashna 7y ago
  Wouldn't be too difficult considering others in his alleged age group are dead.
- saalweachter 7y ago
  From that same article: > A school transfer certificate had been found. Based on the certificate, he said, Dharam Pal Singh was “78 or so.” And he was not illiterate. The age was corrected on Singh’s election card, but he continued to use an old card “to hide his age,” the civil servant said. Edit: Oh man, this is a fascinating Wikipedia edit history: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=785789045&oldid=783399458&title=Dharampal_Singh_Gudha https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=785789045&oldid=78... The information above was originally included in the "Controversy section", sourced from the NYT. On June 15 2017, an editor rephrased the Wikipedia section containing the above information, and reversed the order of the two sentences. However, when they did so, they moved the citation from the _end_ of the two sentences to the _middle_ of the two sentences. Later, on August 9 2017, a different editor removed the second sentence as unsupported (because it was no longer followed by a blue [number]). Thus was the information that some documentation supported an age of "78 or so" lost from Wikipedia.

narrator 7y ago

That guy has nothing on Li Ching-Yuen: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Ching-Yuen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Ching-Yuen 7ft tall old guy who is incredibly fit and agile with many witnesses claiming their grandparents knew him as an old man when they were children.

_ph_ 7y ago
A faszinating story to read. While reason clearly says that stories like this need to be fake, one never can stop wondering whether there aren't some people who by odd chance (or very good genes) live far longer than they should. I am a bit thinking about Methuselah's Children by Heinlein here. If natural lives way beyond 100 years would be possible, one would expect a few more documented cases beyond 120 years though. But still, this is faszinating just to speculate about.
- narrator 7y ago
  Seems there are a lot of leads to go on for someone who wanted to dig around in Chinese archives: "He died from natural causes on 6 May 1933 in Kai Xian, Sichuan, Republic of China and was survived by his 24th wife, a woman of 60 years.[8][7] Li supposedly produced over 200 descendants during his life span, surviving 23 wives.[9][8] Other sources credit him with 180 descendants, over 11 generations, living at the time of his death and 14 marriages"
- kazinator 7y ago
  > wondering whether there aren't some people who by odd chance (or very good genes) live far longer than they should. Exactly; death and aging are programmed. We know of hereditary conditions that cause premature aging and death; why can't the opposite exist, causing a human to age more like a tortoise.
  - _ph_ 7y ago
    Observation and logic unfortunately say, that while most people live between 70 and 90 years, the 110-120 years of the documented super-old might already be how far good genes can push the human life.

crispyambulance 7y ago

It makes me wonder, is it possible to determine the age of a living person with any accuracy by some kind of physical measurement or biological test? It seems that birth records and appearance are all we got to go on?

snikeris 7y ago
Telomere length is one such measurement.
- dogma1138 7y ago
  No it’s not because people are born with different telomere lengths and telomeres do not shorten at the same rate or even at a predictable rate through your lifetime.
- pergadad 7y ago
  Influenced by environmental factors, genetics and lifestyle. It can tell you how soon you'll die but not how old you are.
- has2k1 7y ago
  I thought of telomere length too, but given that the person is an outlier in age and they are healthy would it still be as accurate a measure? I think the biological aspect that is the proxy for age should not affect the well-being of the person.
- kazinator 7y ago
  Unless that individual's telomeres behave atypically, in direct relation to their longevity?
  - dogma1138 7y ago
    There is no typical behavior for telomeres. Even in humans they can lengthen under certain circumstances. They do overall shorten with age but without knowing what was your telomere basepair length at birth for a given tissue (as not only length varies between individuals it varies between different types of cells and between individual chromosomes) and tracking your telomeres throughout your life you can’t get any informative data for a given individual out of it.

mabbo 7y ago

I'm skeptical. The oldest man to ever live, Jiroemon Kimura, only lived to 116. Only 7 men have ever lived (confirmed) to 114 or older. Now here is someone who has the health and wellness of a much younger man, claiming to be the oldest man who's ever lived by 3 years (a huge outlier!). We should have a healthy dose of skepticism of such claims. Even Jeanne Calment is being re-examined based primarily on how much of an outlier she was at 122 years old, 3.5 years older than the next oldest person ever[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Scepticism_regarding_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Scepticism_rega...

frogpelt 7y ago
His claims remind me of this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A1i_Ng%E1%BB%8Dc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A1i_Ng%E1%BB%8Dc

apendleton 7y ago

I'm confused about the math here. This article is apparently current (published two days ago), and given that it's 2019, if he was indeed born in 1897, that would make him either 121 or 122, not 119, right?

rm445 7y ago
But the article is partly about a film documentary. Presumably the difference is the time for editing and release and he was/claimed to be 119 when it was filmed.

brink 7y ago

This is extremely hard to believe for obvious reasons. He's a 119 year old man, men typically live shorter lives. He can still run. He looks nowhere near 119. And this is all based on a year that he verbally declared off of the top of his head years ago since he was never given a birth certificate. The four pieces of paperwork "proof" he's providing don't really mean anything, it would just mean that he knowingly or unknowingly lied to an official.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

kasperni 7y ago

Yuri Deigin, the CEO of Youthereum Genetics wrote a fascinating article about why Jeanne Calment’s 122-year old longevity record may be fake. It is a long read in 3 parts [1][2][3] but reads like a really good detective story. [1] https://medium.com/@yurideigin/jaccuse-why-122-year-longevity-record-may-be-fake-af87fc0c3133 https://medium.com/@yurideigin/jaccuse-why-122-year-longevit... [2] https://medium.com/@yurideigin/more-evidence-for-jeanne-calments-identity-theft-hypothesis-26f7cece0cd2 https://medium.com/@yurideigin/more-evidence-for-jeanne-calm... [3] https://medium.com/@yurideigin/oh-jeanne-why-so-young-8e8019967bfc https://medium.com/@yurideigin/oh-jeanne-why-so-young-8e8019...