WORKED OUT TODAY?
Don Pellmann has — and he’s 100— and a world record-holder
SANTA CLARA — Don Pellmann celebrated his 100th birthday in August by riding around AT&T Park in a motor cart with Giants mascot Lou Seal. Six weeks later, the Santa Clara man was setting fiveworld records in track and field at the Senior Olympics in San Diego.
“People ask me what do you do?” Pellmann recently said at his assisted-living facility. “I don’t do anything. I take care of what I got.”
What he’s got is a big dose of chutzpah. Pellmann went sky diving at age 90 and recently proclaimed he’d like to try it again.
For now, he’ll have to satisfy his inner child by flying over high-jump bars.
In a society that glorifies youth, Pellmann has surfaced as a media sensation after his performance for the aged at those Senior Olympics in September. Wearing a T-shirt proclaiming “Donald Pellmann Established 1915 Milwaukee, WI,” the determined athlete set to work at the San Diego Senior Olympics at a svelte 5-feet-11, 170 pounds — his college weight.
Competing in temperatures that matched his age, Pell-
mann became the first centenarian to run faster than 27 seconds in the 100 meters and the first to clear a height — any height — in the high jump. He also broke records in the discus, long jump and shot put in a performance Olympic decathlon champion Jim Thorpe would have appreciated.
“I felt in each one of my events I could have done better,” said Pellmann, who moved to the South Bay 15 years ago. “But when you set the record, I guess you can’t complain.”
Pellmann participates in a popular but unrecognized arena that promotes healthy living seniors. The next Masters World Games in 2017 in New Zealand expects 25,000 competitors.
It’s a sporting phenomenon that is “underappreciated, underutilized and under known,” said Los Gatos’ Joseph Ols, chairman of the masters committee for USA Track and Field’s Pacific region.
The international governing body, World Masters Athletics, keeps seniors records in five-year increments that ended with a 100-and-over category until a 105-year-old Polish man recorded marks in three events in June, according to news reports.
Pellmann, who was the only 100-plus competitor in San Diego, wasn’t out to impress anyone. But he just happened to turn in a performance that has garnered worldwide acclaim, including a New York Times front-page story.
It didn’t matter that before his 100-meter run the meet announcer introduced him as “David Pellmann.” Only about a dozen spectators were in the stands anyway.
Pellmann, who had not competed in three years, rested in the shade in a lawn chair between events when he wasn’t taking advantage of a massage table in the medical tent.
Pellmann hadn’t tried the pole vault since a meet in 2013, and he would fail to clear the bar on this day. It doesn’t help that he has nowhere to practice the difficult event.
“I was sure I could do it,” a disappointed Pellmann said, adding that he hadn’t missed a medal opportunity in 125 previous meets.
But Pellmann does have plenty of hardware: Close to 900 medals through three decades of competition. He displays only a handful of them on the wall of his living quarters.
Sons Ned and Jim have more medals in boxes at their homes. Pellmann gave everyone in his bowling league a medal when leaving Arkansas to live closer to sons Jim and Jay in San Jose.
Everyone who came to celebrate his 100th birthday in August also got a medal.
“What are you going to do with that many?” he asked.
The pursuit of medals began at age 70 when Ned suggested his father enter a Senior Olympics event in Arkansas, where Pellmann had lived after retirement as a tool and die expert. Pellmann defeated the state champion in his age group in five events.
“I was a basket case,” he said of the exhaustion that effort brought. “I could barely get into the car.”
Pellmann realized he’d need to get into better shape if he planned to keep competing. That led to a daily regimen of “some kind of exercise” for the onetime gymnast and track athlete. Even now, Pellmann can be found walking near his facility, jogging the hallways or out back throwing the shot put and discus.
Not bad for a guy who hadn’t had much of a workout regimen — he’d dabbled with bowling, softball and tennis — for six decades.
Pellmann had participated in track in high school and college in Wisconsin. The Great Depression cut short his track career at La Crosse State Teachers College (now University of Wisconsin-La Crosse).
He eventually helped build parts for planes during World War II. Pellmann retired from General Motors in 1970 after also helping make instruments for the Apollo missions.
Now he devotes much of his time to his wife of 68 years, Marge, who needs more care than he does.
Pellmann credits his German stock for good health. He has never suffered a sports-related injury or illness that forced him to miss a meet. Pellmann takes a pill to control his blood pressure but no other medications.
When asked for his secret, he said, “I say four words: ‘Eat sensibly and exercise.’ ”
The centenarian still sounded disappointed about the pole vault miss two weeks after the meet. But then, he has created a high standard for himself.
Ten years ago in Colorado, Pellmann grabbed seven world records in one day in what he describes as the best performance of his career.
In 2011, at age 95, Pellmann set three more world records at the Bay Area Senior Games.
That day at Stanford, Pellmann scraped his leg badly against the bar in the pole vault. But he refused to let paramedics treat him and instead jetted off to the throwers pit, where he broke the world record for the discus.
It proved to be such a long day that Pellmann swore it would be his last meet.
“He said, ‘No, never again,’ then he did it again,” Ned Pellmann said of his father’s past retirement announcements.
“Who knows?”