Tomiko Itooka continued mountaineering into her 70s, climbing the 3,067-metre Mount Ontake in Japan – in trainers!
A 116-year-old Japanese woman will be named the world's oldest person by the Guinness Book of Records.
The U.S.-based Gerontology Research Group announced Wednesday that former mountaineer Tomiko Itooka, born May 23, 1908, will assume the title.
Itooka was next in line to hold the record after Spaniard Maria Branyas Morera died Tuesday at the age of 117 in a nursing home in Catalonia, according to her family.
The Gerontology Research Group (GRG) is pleased to announce that Ms. Tomiko Itooka from Ashiya, Hyogo Prefecture, 🇯🇵 Japan, born on 23.05.1908, aged 116, became the candidate for the GUINNESS WORLD RECORD @GWR Title of the oldest person in the world. photo.twitter.com/z4fdZaJHin
— Gerontology Research Group (GRG) (@GerontologyGrg) August 20, 2024
Itooka, a native of Ashiya City in Hyogo Prefecture in western Japan, was born the same year the Wright brothers made their first public flights in Europe and America. That year, the first long-distance radio message was sent from the Eiffel Tower.
The mother of three continued climbing into her 70s and twice scaled the 3,067-metre (10,062-foot) Mount Ontake in Japan, surprising her guide by climbing the mountain in trainers rather than hiking boots.
At age 100, he climbed the long stone steps of Japan's Ashiya Shrine without using a cane, said the group, which claims to have the “world's largest database of supercentenarians.”
Branyas, the previous record holder who lived through the 1918 flu, two world wars and the Spanish Civil War, contracted COVID-19 in 2020, just weeks after celebrating her 113th birthday, but made a full recovery.
Born in the United States, she had previously posted on an X account managed by her family that “the time is near.”
“Don’t cry, I don’t like tears. And above all, don’t suffer for me. Wherever I go, I will be happy,” she said.
Guinness World Records officially recognized Branyas' status as the world's oldest person in January 2023 following the death of French nun Lucile Randon at age 118.
The oldest verified person ever to have lived was Frenchwoman Jeanne Louise Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days.
