Klein discovers fountain of youth in competitive swimming

He thinks it was 48.5 seconds, but it doesn’t really matter.

Saddle Brooke’s Fred Klein isn’t the kind of guy who races against the clock anyway.

The oldest competitor in this year’s Green Valley Senior Games seems to swim and live life mostly for today, and for the fun of it.

However, he admits he would like to beat that winning time from last year in the 50-meter freestyle — if that’s what it was — if only to keep a challenge in front of him, since there are generally no swimmers in his age division (90-95).

He took all four gold medals uncontested in the ‘07 Games, and is expected to do the same this year.

“There’s nobody my age swimming, so I guess I’ll just try to beat my time from last year,” said Klein, 92 in April, the senior member of the Saddle Brooke Swim Club, where he trains three days a week for his four best events—50- and 25-meter freestyle and sidestroke.

When he’s not in the gym, he’s in the pool at the Robson retirement community north of Tucson, getting tips from his volunteer guide who used to coach the University of Maryland swim team, along with encouragement from a bevy of new friends.

“It’s been a privilege to swim with these guys,” said the Yonkers, N.Y., native who retired to Arizona in 1978 as senior vice president with a carpet company in Atlanta.

He puts in a full 45-minute workout in the water with his teammates — which includes some socializing, of course — but Klein is still focused on getting better when most his age would be looking back on life.

“It’s something to work toward.”

He does four or five meets a year with the club, and recently qualified for the national senior games in Palo Alto, Calif., next year by winning the 50-yard freestyle in Glendale last month.

He now holds the fastest time in America in his age group.

Actually, swimming wasn’t Klein’s best sport, although he won some “pickup races” at a YMCA summer camp in upstate New York back in the 1920s.

His invitation to join the Saddle Brooke group three years ago was the first time he’d done any competitive swimming since those childhood days.

Nearly a scratch golfer when he lived in Scottsdale and owned his own business, Klein was a high school and Dartmouth College track standout in the 1930s before injuries from an auto accident cut his athletic career short.

The former WWII Marine pilot is fully aware that accident wasn’t the only time he was able to dodge death, so it’s obvious he continues to appreciate each day.

“I would have been dead for sure,” he said, explaining that he was ready, like many, for the invasion of Japan when the atomic bomb was dropped.

Though he survived a triple bypass in 1991, the 5-foot-10, 170-pound athlete remains committed to pushing himself.

“I’ve always been pretty fit,” he said, echoing perhaps the most laudable motive for establishing the Games more than 20 years ago.

“I just keep going.”

Mike Touzeau is a freelance writer for the Green Valley News.