Tanaka, a 118-year-old woman, will carry a torch to the Japan Olympics

News Desk –
The Olympic Games are going to be held in Japan next May. The world’s oldest person, 118-year-old Kanake Tanaka, will carry the torch. He will receive the Olympic flame as the torch passes through his home district of Fukuoka. News CNN

Kane Tanaka was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s oldest living person in 2019. He has twice won cancer and passed two epidemics. Tanaka’s family will take him up to 100 meters in a wheelchair. This super centurion will then walk a few steps and hand over the torch to the next runner.

Earlier, 106-year-old Aida Gemmanak carried the Olympic torch in 2016. He was a native of Brazil. In addition, 101-year-old Alexander Kaptarenko carried the torch to the 2014 Olympics.

Tanaka was born in 1903, the year the Wright brothers made history by flying their first airplane. He is almost as old as the modern Olympic Games, which began in 1896. At the age of 19, he started a family with a rice shopkeeper. He worked in that rice shop till he was 103 years old. He has four children, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

When the last Olympics were held in Tokyo in 1964, Tanaka was 61 years old. If both the summer and winter editions of the Olympics are counted, this year’s Olympics will be the 49th in Tanaka’s life.

He lived in World War II and the Spanish Flu of 1918, although his grandson AG said, “I can’t remember much of what he said about the past … He thinks about the life ahead – he really enjoys living in the present.”

Tanaka now lives in a nursing home. He usually wakes up at six in the morning and enjoys playing board games Othello. The Tanaka family could not see him for 18 months during the Kovid-19 epidemic.

According to Tanakar’s family, the secret behind keeping his body and mind healthy and fresh is his curious mind and regular practice of mathematics. However, Tanaka is by no means the only centenarian in Japan. According to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, for the first time last year, the country recorded more than 80,000 centenarians.

In 2020, one in every 1,565 people in Japan was over 100 years of age, and more than 8% of them were women. Years.

In 2019, the Guinness Book of World Records certified Tanaka as the world’s oldest living person. Now Tanakar is eyeing another milestone. The oldest surviving record is in the hands of a French woman who died at the age of 122. Her grandson AG said Tanaka said he wanted to break the record as well.

Tanakar’s family says he is not training for the torch relay, but he is excited to be part of the Olympics.

His 60-year-old grandson AG Tanaka told the media, “Kane Tanaka is still active at this age. It’s a great thing. We want others to be inspired to see him. No one should ever think of age as a barrier.”

Officials announced last month that the torch relay at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, which was delayed by the epidemic, would begin at Fukushima on March 25 in compliance with the Covid-19 warning. Officials say the torch will first travel to areas affected by the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami before traveling to every corner of Japan to mark the 10th anniversary of the disaster.

Those who want to see the relay from the side of the road must follow hygiene rules, stay at home if they feel sick and refrain from traveling outside the area where they live. Torch bearers must complete a health checklist two weeks before joining the relay and be infected. Officials advise to refrain from risky activities.