At 76, Mick Ives is probably in better shape than you, and he can probably ride a bike faster and farther than you too. He can probably out-ride most people actually.
"I've never stopped racing, since the autumn of 1956 till the present day," says Ives, a native of Coventry, England. "I ride summer and winter nonstop, whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I don't really know."
Some of the guys he went to school with are now "real old guys who can hardly walk around, if they're still here."
Prime & Fire recently profiled Ives as part of "a series of short films that want to prove that it's never too late to buck the trend and also inspire all of us to pick up a sport disregarding our age and respective abilities." Business Insider followed up with Ives to learn more about his impressive lifelong passion for cycling.
"I'm very lucky," he told Prime & Fire. "I feel like a 40-year-old most of the time. I just don't realize how old I am."
Read on to see how age has done little to deter this septuagenarian from pursuing a life of sport:
Ives is a well-decorated cyclist ...
.... who competed professionally for 16 years. He has been the UCI World Masters Cycling Champion five times and won a record 81 British national cycling titles, according to his website, in addition to winning other titles. He even raced in the US, in 1976.
A portrait of the cyclist as a young man ...
... back when leather elbows were all the rage.
At an age when many cyclists have hung up the bike, Ives, 76, still rides nearly every day.
He's hugely impressive, and an inspiration for many.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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