These Women Rowers Are Breaking Records After 80. Here Are Their Secrets.

“Come on, mamacitas. You got more power!” shouts Rodrigo Rodrigues, head coach for masters rowing at the Marin Rowing Association. The women push harder against their foot stretchers and gradually their movements begin to mirror one another as they find their rhythm—sliding their seats forward, dropping their blades into the water, and unleashing a collective push that drives the boat ahead.

Although Rodrigues affectionately calls them mamacitas, seven of the eight women are, in fact, abuelitas, or grandmothers. And this unusual crew of mostly silver-haired athletes is aiming to make history.

On this early October morning, the women are rowing on the Corte Madera Creek, a placid waterway leading to San Francisco Bay, in their last practice with Rodrigues before flying to Boston for the Head of the Charles Regatta, one of the rowing world’s largest events. Of the 12,000 or so athletes converging on Boston from around the world beginning on October 16, these eight stand out. Their average age is 80, and they’re poised to become the first women’s octogenarian eight to race the Head of the Charles. All eight women rowers come from the same boathouse in Marin County, the same one where I train. “This is no Rolodex boat,” says Carol Keller, 81—meaning no one was recruited from among the fittest 80-year-olds around the country. They also belong to a group some researchers call “invisible sportswomen”: older female athletes who show remarkable longevity and strength but have largely been ignored by studies, which have typically focused on men. Along the way, they’ve found ways to preserve their strength and agility, often training together three to four days a week.

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Much of what we assume about the 80-year-old body comes from people who stopped exercising decades ago, notes Lorcan Daly, an assistant lecturer in sport and exercise science at Ireland’s Technological University of the Shannon, who studies older athletes as a model of healthy aging. Women still training and racing at 80 have taken much of that inactivity “out of the equation,” he told me in an email, giving scientists a better sense of how much of the decline we blame on age “might actually be avoidable.” For instance, a 2018 study of more than 122,000 adults found that those with the highest levels of aerobic fitness had substantially lower mortality rates than those with the lowest. And even at 80, Daly says, aerobic fitness, strength and power remain responsive to training. He compares it to dental care: “Imagine you didn’t brush your teeth for 40 years, and then at 80 you looked in the mirror and said, ‘Well, that’s aging.’”

Yet women athletes this age remain scarce, both in the lab and on the water. In a 2024 paper, Daly reported that women make up fewer than 12 percent of the 80-and-over category in the global rankings of indoor rowing-machine maker Concept2—a gap he attributes partly to a generation discouraged from sport when they were young. Take Arlene Killpack, 85, the oldest in this historic boat. She discovered rowing in the early 1990s while commuting by bike from San Francisco to her job in Marin. She recalls pedaling along Corte Madera Creek when she noticed sweep boats gliding by. Having gone to school in the 1950s, well before the 1972 passage of Title IX, which barred sex discrimination in federally funded education programs, she “never thought it was possible to actually ever be on a team,” she recalls. Drawn by the rhythm and grace of the rowers, she signed up for a “learn to row” class at the Marin Rowing Association.

Older rowers can be overlooked at the boathouse too. “Normally, coaches treat older people kind of like we’re second-class citizens,” says Corrie Sias, 79, who nearly two decades ago rowed in the first Marin women’s 60-and-over boat to win gold at the Head of the Charles. Marta Osterloh, 78, a retired public defender, joined the Marin team after she was cut from her A-level team. “Everyone with gray hair got fired,” she recalls.

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Rodrigues was an exception, choosing to cox these women at the regatta over the club’s men’s 70s boat. “The power and energy these women bring in every day is very moving and I wanted to make it easier for them to accomplish something bigger than each of us individually,” he says.  

While it takes longer to warm up during practices and they don’t have the strength they had as 60-year-olds, Sandy Armstrong, the club’s longtime executive director, has noticed that they’re better at moving in rhythm together than they were when they were younger.

But what do these athletes actually need to perform at their age-appropriate peaks? In a 2026 review of four decades of research, University of Calgary’s Doyle-Baker Lab found just 29 studies on how age affects endurance in women athletes, mostly in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. “Women in their 70s, 80s, and beyond remain understudied,” lead author Danica Vangsgaard told me in an email. “We also need to be cautious about assuming that findings from younger or middle-aged athletes apply directly to women in their 70s and 80s.”

So instead these women follow the practices that work for them—often swapping tips on nutrition and rest and doing their workouts together.

“I recognize my energy is limited, my reactions slower, and my focus less concentrated,” says Kim Coggin, 77, who is the crew’s stroke seat, the rower who sets the boat’s rhythm. “Rowing is a high priority in my choices of activity, so I go to bed early to get up feeling rested.”

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After the final practice with their cox, Coggin pulls out the breakfast she’d packed for herself: a hard-boiled egg for protein and cottage cheese with fresh fruit. The women aim to eat more protein, which research suggests helps older athletes preserve muscle mass and physical function, and less added sugar (though cookies and cinnamon buns still make regular appearances as treats at post-practice gatherings). Like many of her teammates, Coggin is a dedicated napper and has largely given up alcohol as recent research links even relatively modest alcohol consumption among older adults to an increased risk of cancer mortality—findings that suggest that drinking less may support a longer, healthier life.

The exception is Killpack, who still enjoys a glass of wine with her dinner every single night, sometimes adding an ice cube to water it down. One of her happiest memories is of rowing with an Irish women’s rowing team in Galway. After getting off the water, they’d joined their Irish boatmates in the evening at the pub to reward themselves with a pint of Guinness.

It’s the friendships forged through rowing that have helped these women keep going. Growing older together—comparing aches and injuries, adapting their training as strength and stamina decline, and encouraging one another through setbacks—has also helped them make peace with getting old.

“It is hard accepting that your body is aging and doesn't perform like it used to and there is nothing you can do about it,” says Lindy Edward, 81, a former marathoner. “I now have quiet acceptance and have gratitude for what I am able to do.”

So how will the eight mamacitas in the boat celebrate if they complete their long course at the Head of the Charles and make rowing history? Perhaps, for some, by cracking lobster and raising a glass of champagne in Boston.

But on this morning after practice, the team stands in a circle outside the boathouse. Teammate Beth Cook, 74, who is not one of the rowers going to Head of the Charles this year, gives each competitor a small charm to wear on race day inscribed with the words, “Believe” and “Love.” “This is where I get teary-eyed,” Cook says, as she finished handing out the gifts. “You are not only doing it for yourselves, you're doing it for the team. You're doing it for our club. You're doing it for our daughters and you're doing it for our granddaughters.”