Nearly 80-year-old champion swimmer still learning

At nearly 80 years old, a swimmer from Picton is anything but past his prime.

James Ross was reluctant to call himself an international champion, despite being a medallist at the most recent World Masters Games.

Albeit, not many his age can swim four different strokes in one go, he said. Mastering medley swimming, and particularity the butterfly, was his secret for medal success. “... one of the reasons I’ve done well, is that I swim butterfly and I swim IM (individual medley), which is like you swim butterfly, back, breast and free all in one event,” he said. “You just don’t get many people that are older that swim that, it’s tough, so I do feel good about that.”

Originally from Canada, the 79-year-old was a Masters veteran, having entered his first event nearly four decades ago. But he was far from being a lifelong swimmer.

“I was sort of a late bloomer in almost everything in my life. I didn’t start swimming until I was around 40. And I don’t even know why I started doing that, except that there was a swimming pool next door to where I worked.”

Though the sport “didn’t come natural” to Ross when he began, he quickly grew to love the pool, and decided to enter the first ever World Masters Games in Toronto, Canada in 1985.

He had since entered countless more events, national and international, and he now almost always returned home with at least one medal.

“At my age, you long since stopped worrying about getting better, you’re not going to get faster, so you just try to minimise how much slower you’re going,” he said.

“So the challenge is not to go faster, the challenge is to develop your technique”.

Ross’ most recent success came at the 2024 New Zealand Masters Games held in Dunedin from February 3-11, when he picked up six medals, including a gold, after placing in every race he swam in.

“When I was in Dunedin, I worked with a coach down there for a couple of sessions, and the stuff that she taught me, I again just realised, not how bad I was, but how much more I could learn,” he said

“When you look back at yourself, a couple of years ago or something, you think ‘oh my god, I was terrible”.

His proudest achievement to date however was winning a bronze in the 70-74 year old men’s 400m IM race at the 2017 World Masters Games in Auckland.

“That was very important to me, because it was Worlds ... though not many people swim those, so I got a medal,” he said.

Ross was already planning a trip to Australia’s Gold Coast for this year’s edition of the Pan Pacific Masters Games, where his only goal would be to “get there and then do what I can that day”.

“I think the reason that we do it is not because we think we’re going to go to the Olympics, I think it’s because it allows to not age as quickly,” he said.

“It allows you, I think, to maintain maybe a better quality of life.”

MATT HAMPSON Picton swimmer James Ross, 79, has no plans to stop bringing home medals.