West Vancouver super senior Christa Bortignon has been named the B.C. Athletics Masters Track & Field Female Athlete of the Year after spending 2022 rewriting the record books in her age category.
This was Bortignon’s first season competing in the 85+ age grouping, and she wasted no time in setting new world records in several events. The 85-year-old – she turns 86 at the end of January – set new age-group world records in the indoor 60-metre and 200-m races as well as the long jump and triple jump. Outdoors she set new marks in the 100-m, 200-m, long jump, triple jump, high jump and heptathlon.
Bortignon also currently holds multiple indoor and outdoor world records in the W75 and W80 age groups. She started competing in track and field in 2009 and age 72 after gaining inspiration from legendary North Shore masters athlete Olga Kotelko, another multiple world-record-holder who died in 2014 at age 95.
Bortignon was named the World Female Masters Athlete of the Year in 2013, and in 2021 was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Huntsman World Senior Games, a major masters event held annually in St. George, Utah.
She will be feted, along with other athletes, at BC Athletics' awards banquet, Feb. 4 at Richmond's Executive Airport Plaza Hotel. Tickets are $70, available for purchase on the BC Athletics website.
