“It’s the story of my life,” she’ll tell you — things happening by chance. Holding the world record in her age group for deadlifting 100 pounds doesn’t seem like a “chance” thing, but weightlifting didn’t become part of 89-year-old Andora Quinby’s life until she turned 78. That was the same year, by the way, she retired as aquatic director at the local YMCA after 25 years and began teaching water exercise classes part-time. Three years before that, she earned her master’s degree in human services management from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. See the Silver Star Andora Quinby Photo Gallery. 

 

Even before her position at the Y, she had been active in aquatics since the age of 46. Before that, she bore eight children. And before that, she had gotten a degree in physics and worked as a physicist for the Navy during World War II, helping protect ships at sea from magnetic mines.

“It’s like the hand of God says, ‘This decade you’ll do this and this decade you’ll do that,’” she said, with a giggle. “Most of my honors and achievements have happened over the age of 70.”

“In September, I’m going to be 90,” said Quinby, who weighs just over 100 pounds. “How many other 90-year-old women do you know who do this?”

And while it’s true that there’s not much competition in her age group — in fact, none in the group she is about to move up to when she turns 90 — she’s still hoping to beat her own record. She’s training now for a competition in November in Lebanon, Pa., to beat last year’s record —the world record — of lifting 100 pounds. That may not be a problem. She says she lifted 115 pounds during a recent training session.

She trains six hours a week with two trainers, one for strength and the other for “flexibility and abdominals and other things.”

Besides training, she works one hour a week at the Y teaching water exercise. “Music and teaching are big in the family,” she says. She has played piano for much of her life. Over the years, besides teaching swimming, she has taught singing and ballet.

Teaching is even part of her weightlifting, because she does it with others in mind. She says she lift weights two reasons. One is “for fun.” The other is “to make older women stop and think, ‘now if she can do it, I can do it.’ … My mission is to get them to move it. Quite often, I’ll get 60- or 65-year-olds (in her classes) who say ‘I’m too old.’ I put my hands to my hips, and I say, ‘Oh really. Tell me all about it.’”

Quinby doesn’t take supplements, “just regular vitamins,” but she says she eats “about twice the protein an ordinary person requires, for muscle maintenance.”