The Italian sprinter Emma Maria Mazzenga holds four world records for women over 90, and scientists are now studying her to understand how she keeps moving so fast for so long.

“In Italy, it’s just me,” Mazzenga said, as quoted by The Washington Post. “At the world championships, it was me and an American.”

Last year, she smashed the outdoor 200-meter record for her age group with a time of 51.47 seconds — and then beat her own mark a month later. Researchers in Italy and the United States say the sprinter’s cardiorespiratory fitness resembles that of someone in their 50s, and the mitochondria in her muscles, the tiny powerhouses of the cell, work as well as those of a healthy 20-year-old.

‘She can do things at 91′

“She’s aging,” Marta Colosio, a postdoctoral fellow at Marquette University who is leading the study, told The Washington Post. “But she can do things that at 91, people can’t do.”

Mazzenga, a retired science teacher from Padua, began running at 19, took a 25-year break to raise her family, and returned to sprinting at 53. Even during the pandemic, she wouldn’t stay still. “I never spend a whole day indoors,” she was quoted to have said by The Washington Post. “Sports have given me so much. I’d say it’s been a lifesaver. I don’t like getting by — just waiting for dusk to fall. I need action.”

Scientists who tested Mazzenga found that while her fast-twitch muscle fibers, linked to explosive speed, resemble those of a healthy 70-year-old, her slow-twitch fibers, which drive endurance, look more like those of someone in their 20s.

“Either through genetics or her lifestyle, or a mixture of both, she is able to keep that communication between the brain, between the nerves and the muscle at a much healthier level than what we typically see in a 90-year-old,” Chris Sundberg, a co-lead of the research at Marquette University, told The Washington Post.

Mazzenga trains two to three days a week and is now preparing to race the 100- and 200-meter in Catania, Italy, next month. “But, given my age, that’s not a given,” she said. “I make plans month by month, not beyond that.”

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