At 118 years old, the world’s oldest living person is preparing to carry the Olympic torch this May in Japan.

Kane Tanaka, who has twice survived cancer, lived through two global pandemics and loves fizzy drinks, will take the flame as it passes through Shime, in her home prefecture of Fukuoka.

While Tanaka’s family will push her in a wheelchair for most of her 100-meter (about 328 feet) or so leg, the supercentenarian — a person aged over 110 years old — is determined to walk the final few steps, as she passes the torch to the next runner.
CNN spoke exclusively with Tanaka, who has a new pair of sneakers for the event — a gift from her family on her birthday in January.

“It’s great she reached that age and she can still keep up an active lifestyle — we want other people to see that and feel inspired, and not to think age is a barrier,” said her grandson Eiji Tanaka, who is in his 60s.

Previous record holders for the oldest Olympic torchbearers include Aida Gemanque of Brazil, who lit the torch at the 2016 Rio Summer Games age 106, and table tennis player Alexander Kaptarenko, who ran with the torch at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games at 101 years old.

Tanaka was born in 1903 — the year aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright made history by completing the world’s first powered flight.
She went on to have four children with the rice shop owner she married at 19 years old, and worked in the family store until she was 103. She has five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

She lived through two world wars and the 1918 Spanish flu, although her grandson Eiji said: “I don’t remember her talking much about the past … She’s very forward thinking — she really enjoys living in the present.”

And she is almost as old as the modern Olympic Games, which began in 1896.

When the Olympics were last held in Tokyo in 1964, Tanaka was 61 years old. When counting both the summer and winter editions of the games, this year’s Olympics will be the 49th of her lifetime.

Tanaka now lives in a nursing home, where she usually wakes at 6 a.m. and enjoys playing the strategic board game, Othello. Tanaka’s family, who have not been able to visit her for 18 months during the Covid-19 pandemic, said staying curious and doing math are her secrets to keeping the mind sharp and body healthy.

For the first time last year, Japan recorded more than 80,000 centenarians, according to the country’s Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry — marking the 50th consecutive annual increase.

In 2020, one in every 1,565 people in Japan was over 100 years old — more than 88% of them women.

In Japan, women have a life expectancy of 87.45 years compared to 81.4 for men, government figures released in July 2020 showed.

In 2019, the Guinness Book of World Records certified Tanaka as the world’s oldest living person, and now she has her sights on another milestone — the record for the oldest person to ever live is held by a French woman, who died age 122.
“(Kane) said she wants to break that record,” said Eiji Tanaka, her grandson.

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