Weia Reinboud is a Renaissance woman for our times -- an artist, anarchist, musician -- and world record holder in the high jump. (See one of her paintings behind her). Below she's shown setting her W50 record of 1.57 (5-1 3/4) in August 2000. Bottom photo depicts her jumping at the Gateshead world WAVA meet in 1999.

Photo by Ken Stone

Dutch treat and record threat:
An interview with Weia Reinboud

In Dutch, Weia means “Competition.” For Weia Reinboud of Utrecht (about 20 miles southeast of Amsterdam), competition includes finding a way to get her skinny butt over a high jump bar. And that she does very well – setting world W50 records indoors (1.55) and out (1.57) in recent years Also fluent in English and German, Weia is an outspoken member of the masterstf Yahoo group as well as a writer, philosopher, artist, dragonfly expert and jazz musician who plays the tenor saxophone, piano and drums. This interview was conducted by e-mail in November 2002.

By Ken Stone

Masterstrack.com: At the 1999 Gateshead world WAVA meet, when you were 49, you jumped against Canadian Olympian Debbie Brill, who set a stunning world W45 high jump record in beating you 1.76 to 1.55. You also won silver in the triple jump. What are your other career highlights?

Weia Reinboud: Medals have not been my interest -- nice meets and records have. The nicest meet definitely was the Gay Games (Amsterdam 1998), but my only world (Gateshead 1999) and European championship (Potsdam 2002) up to now were very fine, too. Dutch masters events are always very nice. Unfortunately, the number of participants mostly is low or very low, so I have collected many medals in a few years. But I like more to be beaten by a jumper like Debbie than jumping highest with a 15-centimeter gap with No. 2 – like in Potsdam. Career highlights are all records. To my astonishment, I equaled the Dutch high jump record W45 in my first season, 1.50 (age 46). Later on I learned that the record was weaker than I expected, plus that I had more talent than I ever had realized. I improved the record with small increments up to a world record of 1.57 at age 50. But my 1.55 at age 52 is relatively better. 

By the way: mine is the weakest of all age records.  All personal records are highlights – on 15 disciplines already. For a short time I possessed the European record in triple jump W50, until the great Anna Wlodarczyk showed what a real triple jump means. My national record now is 10.24 (Potsdam gold, age 52). I also possess the W45 national record in the heptathlon, but was only the second who tried it. (5379 points old gradings, 5104 new gradings)

In the past two years, you have set world indoor and outdoor high jump records in the W50 age group (1.55 and 1.57, respectively). You once wrote: “I personally have to train fanatically to jump the heights I do.” How DO you train?

Yes, it is hard work. I cannot train on a low pace, so three workouts a week is the maximum for my muscles (except for recovery and endurance runs sometimes). Two workouts are quite general for sprinters. I am not a real sprinter but like it, also because it is with a group. The third workout is for the high jump and mostly I am doing it alone; there are no other high jumpers at our track club and we have no trainer for high jumping at the moment. 

I stopped doing weight training and concentrate on specific forms now. My reason is that specific forms build up the whole thing (muscles, tendons and joints) while weight training is mostly for muscles. Joints and tendons have to stand enormous forces in jumping.  

A year is divided in three parts with an indoor peak, a May/June peak and another one in August/September. Depending on important meets of course. In winter, a workout contains up to some 30 run-ups, jump series (like step-step-jump, or hops and so on) with a total of up to 200 jumps (100 per leg) and some slower stuff. 

After such a workout, it costs several kilometers before biking feels OK again! In summer, workouts build up to say 4X5 jumps with short run-ups (for certain technical details) plus 6X5 full jumps. Then suddenly two or three weeks before the intended peak; this reduces to at most eight full jumps with enough rest in between. It is so nice to feel the peak coming! 

You began competing after a 20-year layoff from track, you once wrote. What did you do for exercise all those years? What motivated you to take up jumping again?

Mostly no exercise at all, except for biking around the city and walking in the woods. The longest walk was 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) in eight weeks. I also was silly enough to try to walk as much as possible within 24 hours. It was 105.5 kilometers (65.4 miles) spotting some 80 species of birds along the way. Several times I started running, but within a year I stopped again. Then, in a period of not well-being, I accidentally saw athletic championships on TV (I do not have a TV myself) and thought: “Wow, there I can find more of those tall and bony women; I’m not the only one.” So I restarted. And indeed high jump turned out to be my favorite. Tall and bony of course is an advantage in high jumping, I am 1.84 tall (6-0 1.2) and weigh (in summer) around 57 kilograms (125 pounds).  

What kind of track career did you have as a young girl? What were your events and bests? Did you enjoy any other sports? 

I started at age 16 and did it for some 10 years, as I remember well. I hardly dared the high jump – remember the landing in the sand after a straddle?  I also had some very bad landing experiences in the first years of the flop, with simple cushions to land on, or between. I still have problems with daring to high jump. But I will learn the thing before I’m 60! 

I never specialized then. My bests were 800 (lost the details, 2:13.9 best, I suppose) and also once tried 25K (15.5 miles), just under 1 hour, 51 minutes, if I remember well. Looking back, I think I trained too much and/or intensively then, five times a week and improving hardly. More should have been possible. 

Other sports? I am thinking of doing the double decathlon in 2003, isn’t that enough? I like biking although I am not good at it. Going up a mountain on a hot day, nice! (There are no mountains in this country, so I did it only a few times during vacations.) And I like playing billiards, but that is no real sport. 

You were among the pioneers on the masterstf mailing list on egroups – and have been among the most prolific of writers. (I count more than 130 postings from you.) We all have reasons for sharing our thoughts online. What are yours? 

I like this sport very much, like to hear thoughts of others, like to share mine. And like to see where we all over the world are active. I do some statistics, on high jumping or aging, so I like to know what is going on. And I need “virtual concurrents.” I mean, in Potsdam the level on the triple jump was low (I was 1.5 meters in front) so I like to know that a virtual Wlodarczyk jumped one meter more than I did, and a virtual Phil Raschker a quarter of a meter. Those virtuals stimulate me. You can feel much stimulation on the mailing list and so it is one of the things that will push our sport forward!  

Around 1991, you wrote a brilliant 7,000-word essay on political anarchism -- mostly dispelling misconceptions such as “anarchists are bomb-throwers” while setting out 17 principles of the philosophy. What got you interested in anarchism? For open-minded Holland, this may not be a big deal. But people in other countries may not be so accepting. How do you deal with dismissive attitudes – perceptions that you’re crazy? 

Open-mindedness is good for everybody, I think. I only live once and I like to make up my mind on any subject myself. It did lead to clashes with my father, for example, but I would like to live my own life, not his. And in high school I was about the only one against alcohol. Group pressure can be severe, but I have always resisted it, from a very low age. Don’t know why, but I can recommend it to all. You are no group, aren’t you?

I am crazy in many aspects, but it doesn’t bother me. Anarchist, eating vegan and organic, lesbian, free-jazz tenor sax player, (see Muziek to hear some of her work), feminist, abstract painter, dragonfly specialist, world record holder and so on!

It is always difficult to explain why you have certain interests, especially when they are not mainstream. When I learned to read at age 6, I immediately started to follow the news (more or less) and after a month the Hungary tragedy started (1956). I saw those pictures and asked my father what it was about but received answers that I felt were not complete (he of course tried to protect me against bad things). But my conclusion was: This is not a nice world; it could be better. 

Than followed the decolonization of Africa, the civil rights movement in the U.S., the no nukes movement, the French students in  1968, Vietnam. I started to study physics in 1969, switched to sociology in 1970. There was much leftism in the air, and part of it I liked. The way I went was: theory of  Marxism, radical feminist, anarchist philosophy. It sounds like a logical evolution, but this only is a description. Explanations are hard to come by. Why would that 6-year-old child read the news? And why didn’t my brother do it also?     

Seriously: How would masters track benefit from the principles of anarchism? 

Seriously? In sports sometimes unanarchist things happen, but in masters track I see many things that are OK – also for an anarchist. Cooperation, for example. The way winning and losing are seen in our sport is mostly OK too. Not against others but together with others. Every grass-roots thing is in agreement with anarchistic philosophy. When people try to place themselves above others, or when organizations see themselves as being above their members, then the view of this anarchist is: Laugh at it, do your own thing; it’s not worth energy. Our sport could be a bit more horizontally organized, that’s all.

It is logic that you become angry when threatened unjustly or with violence, but that is a first innate reaction. With your brains (innate too!) you can develop second, wiser reactions, free from egoism, chauvinism, tribalism, nationalism and the like. Anarchism (for me) is an extrapolation of these secondary reactions. It sounds very Utopian, but it leads to new reactions in everyday life too. Kind of stoicism so to speak. “Everyday life” includes masters track of course! 

You recalled competing in the International Gay Games in Amsterdam in 1998. Since many masters athletes are from older generations that frown on homosexuality, this took some courage. Have you encountered any anti-gay bias in masters track? Do gay and lesbian athletes gravitate toward each other in regular masters meets? 

Around 1980, there was a very strong radical lesbian-feminist movement over here. It took not much courage to be lesbian from then on! I did not encounter negative things in masters track, and I do not look for colleagues there. Sexual orientation is extremely unimportant in life, except for some crucial moments. 

You also are very active in keeping masters records and rankings – especially so-called absolute age records. Are you the Netherlands’ version of Pete Mundle? Or is keeping statistics just a hobby? 

It is just a hobby. We have a very good “Pete” -- Ton Peters is his name. Every year he publishes all-time lists for all age classes, 25 deep if possible. Aging is an interesting statistical field. Comparing different disciplines -- is that possible? How does decline with age “really” go? We cannot say much about that; data are much too sparse and chaotic yet. Yesterday I made a combined graph of women’s world records on the running distances. You can easily see that decline for sprints is different from decline for 400-5000 meters. And you can see how astonishing some records of Yekaterina Podkopayeva are. She is by far the best runner in our sport. Or is something else the case? Statistics lead to these kinds of facts, but mostly you end up with more questions than you started with. 

I am preparing to place these kinds of statistics on the Web, but it does not yet work right. As an aside: Statistics show that in some disciplines decline starts at, say, age 33, but for the runs of women it seems to be around age 37. This leads to the conclusion that 35 is too low for masters. The number of competitors in that age class mostly is low, and statistics show that the women are right: They feel too young to join the masters.  

Are you satisfied with the WMA Age Graded Tables? Do they do a fair job of comparing athletes of different ages? If you could change the tables, how would you change them?

The old gradings were overrating my jumping extremely (2.03); the new ones are better (1.95). But my feeling is that they are still overrating me. As said above: We have too few data and cannot say enough yet. I am trying to make an own set of gradings and see how big or small the differences will become.

One change could be to make the gradings completely linear. At a certain high age, decline seems to accelerate nonlinearly, but we do not know whether this is real or just an effect of the low number of participants at these ages. Recently a jumper showed that his acceleration does not take place at age 90! So away with nonlinearities? I hesitate.

Gradings show how much a result differs from age records (including interpolated records). That is well done by today’s gradings. But you would also like to know how results compare with other ages. Existing gradings do not do that well, and I fear such gradings are impossible. An example: Debbie Brill’s tremendous jump counts as 99.8%, according to me. That would be equal to 2.08 for open age jumpers, but we know she has jumped “only” 1.99 in her prime. Correcting for that leads to severe corrections in the gradings, so extreme that they lean very much on arbitrary hypotheses. By the way: Debbie will turn 50 in March and she will smash my records!

Are the IAAF anti-doping rules good for masters track? 

I think: yes. In the case of Kathy Jager, her doctor has made a severe mistake, I think. Unfortunately, the athlete gets the penalty. Kathy was treated for something that is treated otherwise over here, with treatments available in the U.S. too. I think her doctor should have known better. Would have saved much emotional energy. I suppose drugs are hardly used in our circles, but they are not absolutely absent. So why not use IAAF rules?

How do you prepare yourself mentally for a competition? Do you get nervous?

I am old enough to not becoming nervous anymore -- but I do get nervous! Even for a very unimportant discipline (like throwing a discus or running 100m), I become nervous. Frequenting the toilet you know. Curiously enough, my best high jumps are often very short after another discipline, so that I could not concentrate on it hours before.

What goals have you set for yourself in the near future and long-term future? Are you planning to compete in the WMA Puerto Rico world meet in 2003?

As a principle, I do not fly (to keep my ecological footprint low; I also do not use motorcars). So I will not be in Puerto Rico. Next time in San Sebastian (in 2005)!

For 2003, I have two goals. First: Refine my still rather poor jumping technique. When that succeeds, 1.60 still is possible. But I’ve said that for years already. Second: When everything goes OK, I’ll try the double decathlon in September. (Or double heptathlon, but that is a bit soft.) I took a course for athletic trainers and think I’m able to do all disciplines on a not too low level (but I fear the pole vault). I began doing longer runs a few weeks ago with the double decathlon in mind. Without such a goal, I do not like running distances.

For the long term it is clear: closely following how my personal decline will go. And also I like to start to coach the jumps, but I have no pupils yet. Dutch women are tallest of the world but our high jumping is poor. Where are those talents hanging around?   

Many European countries take masters track more seriously than the United States. Do the Dutch have any lessons on how masters track should be run and marketed?

No! At the Europeans in Potsdam, several small countries (the Finnish, for example) were relatively better than bigger countries, except for Germany. The Dutch women together scored very high too, but over here I hear much complaining about the decline of track and field in general. The number of masters is slowly going upwards, but on the track it nevertheless is still a small community. This fact is hidden because there are among them several highly talented athletes. Sometimes they turned to the track at age 40 or 50. The German woman possessing the W70 high jump record was 65 when she started with track and field! So there must be many potential athletes, but how to attract them? In the media we are absent. Maybe the elderly protesting will change things a bit?

The problem with athletics here is the same as elsewhere. Too many other sports (and spectator plays like soccer), a sitting lifestyle, low coverage of athletics in the media (very different from neighboring Germany). And a special problem: Speed skating is a national sport. In a cold winter, as soon as all the lakes are frozen, about half of the country can be found on ice! There is a lot of coverage of skating competitions on TV. I think most good skaters would be good athletes, too.

What would you like to see changed in masters track?

Records not per five-year age group but per year (that is, absolute records). The five-year classes are good for competitions and rankings, but not for records. Also do away with different throwing weights, 300-meter hurdles and all those short hurdles (“Balkanizing of the hurdles.” someone called it). Change short hurdles together with IAAF to three (or four) short hurdles for all ages and sexes. Then everyone can pick out one that suits.

Who are your heroes in masters track?

Everyone! And some do very astonishing things. I do not know the whole field, but Debbie and Anna and Phil come to my thoughts first. My personal bests on most disciplines are of the world record level of women 10 or even 15 years older. Unbelievably good they all are! 

When you’re not training or competing, what occupies your time and heart?

Most time is consumed writing (on philosophical skepticism at the moment), preparing and designing our editions (small books on philosophy and anarchism; title pages often with calligraphy), making and editing video (on Dutch dragonflies; one minute of our video costs several days in the outside, and the same at home), sometimes making music (editing a CD costs a lot of time also) and painting. Reading about training theory, thinking about high jump technique, analyzing video and so on are nice hobbies too. Housekeeping does not occupy my time and heart but cooking does – I do like eating fat and heavy!

Formerly we (my friend and me) had everything to print our editions ourselves. Now it’s all photocopying (anarchism doesn’t sell). And I made a font family for our work – designing fonts costs many months work! And most time consuming: living. Seeing how the world goes, philosophizing about everything with my friend Rymke (Wiersma). 

How long will you continue competing in masters track? 

Until horizontal.