Who is Emma Maria Mazzenga who runs faster than time: at 92 he has become the subject of study

He started running at nineteen years. But in life he chose teaching. First the graduation then teaching in science. He never wanted to give up his passion. Born in Padua in 1933, Emma Maria Mazzenga is a athletics champion and winner of 11 world titles, 31 European titles and 115 Italian titles. The competitive activity has occupied less than ten years of his life, from 19 to 28 then Professor Mazzenga continued to play sports until he resumes the race at 53 years. He began his second sporting life there. Since then his routine has been made up of three workouts per week on a track covered in winter or on the banks of a river near the summer house. In January 2024 in his city, Padua, became the Italian faster Italian in the world, and he passed on June of the same year, running 200 meters in 50 “33, lowering over a second the previous world record.

His case attracted the attention of a team of Italian and American scientists of the Marquette University of Milwakee who started a specific study on his muscles, his nerves and his mitochondria (the energy plants of the cells). The studies conducted so far reveal muscle fibers comparable to those of a seventy -year -old, but with an oxygenation worthy of a twenty year old. The mitochondria, the small “engines” of the cells, work as if the weather had never passed.

The research attracted the attention of the Washington Post. “His mitochondrial function”, says the researcher Marta Colosio to the American newspaper, “is exceptionally well preserved, suggesting a resistance to muscle aging”. “Thanks to genetics or its lifestyle, or a combination of both is able to maintain communication between the brain, the nerves and the muscles at a much more healthy level than what is normally observed in a 90 -year -old person” added Chris Sundberg, among the scientists involved in the research.