“Birthdays are good for you – the more you have, the longer you live.
Warren Miller, Legendary ski filmmaker
I recently spoke with a man who is about to turn 100—and he’s still setting world records in endurance sports.
Anyone who knows me knows how much I love being active. I am at my best when I am on the move. Yet, as I have gracefully migrated into my 70s, I’m learning to scale back certain activities and pivot into new ones. Fortunately, I have friends who remind me what is still possible.
Sure, aging is a fact of life. I prefer to focus on what I can still do to keep moving forward.
My friends who refuse to let their age get in the way are a constant motivation for me. Tana Jackson is a wonderful example with her fifty Ironman Triathlons. I want to introduce you to another incredible inspiration: Charley French.
Charley didn’t slow down with age—he put his foot on the accelerator!
Don’t Slow Down
Charley French drove a Lamborghini Gallardo for years—and he liked to drive it fast. Recently, he upgraded to a screaming bright-red Audi SQ8, but the spirit of driving fast clearly hasn’t changed. A few years ago, at age 93, he drove from Sun Valley, Idaho, to his favorite triathlon in San Diego with his tri-bike attached to the back via a makeshift suction-cup rack.
“Lamborghinis are not exactly built for carrying bicycles,” he told me. “The rack was supposed to be good for 80 mph, but I was going 120.” He completed the race, stayed the night, and drove back the next day. Are you kidding me?
Charley turns 100 this August and is still doing things many of us gave up on in our 60s. He has motivated me to realize that limitations are often in the mind, not the body.
This photo & caption of my dad and Charley (circa 1948) appears on page 10 of Surfing in Heaven. I did not elaborate much on Charley in that book – but I should have.
They were close surfing and skiing buddies just three years after serving in World War II. While researching my new book, Skiing in Heaven, I reached out to Charley to learn more about their days as Ski Patrolmen at Mt. Waterman.
Born in 1926, when Calvin Coolidge was president and the Great Depression was still three years away, I sent him a “long shot” email to see if he was still “above ground,” as my dad would say. I received a reply the very next day:
“I am still healthy, going to the gym a couple of days a week, Nordic skiing, and bike riding. Are you still fit and doing ok? Have you retired yet?”
“Sent from my iPhone”.
He is definitely above ground and I could not wait to talk to him!
100 Reasons to Read On
We quickly scheduled a phone call that blew my socks off. Charley was sharp as the edges on a brand-new pair of Rossignol skis. He was humble and gracious, and yet so full of deep insights and wisdom on life. There was something big here–Charley was staying competitive and athletic at 99 years of age!
He started the call by mentioning he had just returned to Sun Valley from Italy, where he competed in the 2026 World Masters Cross-Country Skiing Championships. He had hoped to compete, but he took a hard fall during a downhill practice run and ended up with severe back pain, forcing him to withdraw from the race. Even so, traveling to compete at nearly 100 years old says everything about his competitive spirit. I thought Johannes Klæbo was pushing the limits—but Charley is off the charts.
Charley turns 100 years young this August (2026) and he remains one of the most remarkable competitors in the endurance sport community. Here is a little background on how this started.
Ironman Legacy:
In 1986, my dad was living out his retirement in Kona when Charley called to say he was coming over to compete in the Ironman World Championships at age 60. Dad lived right on the race course at Alii Drive in Keahou, and knew a thing or two about the furnace-like heat off the lava fields and the punishing climbs and winds that define the bike and run courses in Kona. I remember him telling me, “Charley has his hands full on that one.”
When the day was done, Dave Scott and Paula Newby Fraser had won the pro race (again) while Charley French snuck in behind them by winning the men’s 60+ age group in an incredible time of 12:13 (a new 60+ world record). He was 42 minutes ahead of his next competitor in his age group. That record stood for 15 years (2001).
That was 40 years ago now, and barely just the tip of the iceberg with Charley. He didn’t slow down with age, he put the pedal to the metal. He continued to ski the bumps at Baldy (Sun Valley) until he was 83. Most of his 200-plus triathlons were completed after age 70, winning his age group in 195 of them. What?!
Athletic Highlights
Charley has been rightly called the Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man in the World”. He has been a dominant figure in endurance sports competition for more years than I can count. He was even inducted into the Sun Valley Winter Sports Hall of Fame (Class of 2011). Like a good wine, Charley keeps getting better with age!
A few highlights:
- World Titles: 5 Age Group World Championship titles in triathlon and 12 World Cup Masters gold medals in cross-country skiing – the majority of those coming in the decades after age 70. As he put it after winning the cross-country skiing title again in 2023, “There was no one in my age group so I was skiing against some kid who was 93 years old”.
- BMT Legend: Completed 45 Boulder Mountain Tour (BMT) races, a 34-kilometer Nordic ski race in Idaho. He even had a new age group created in his name: the “Charley Course Half-Boulder”. That had something to do with the fact that he had won his age group in 41 of the 45 he completed. Yikes.
- Biking Climber: In his 80s and 90s he tackled one of the toughest yearly cycling challenges in Idaho: The Bogus Basin Hill Climb — a 14.5-mile course with 3,500 feet of climbing. He even rode up (and down!) France’s legendary Mount Ventoux at 85, fighting serious headwinds. That climb has humbled some of the best riders in the Tour de France.
The Innovator
Charley’s story goes way beyond athletics. He is also a world-famous innovator and trendsetter.
- Smith Goggles: In the mid-1960s Charley, my dad, and Bob Smith (an orthodontist from San Rafael) were skiing “a week of untracked powder snow” at Jackson Hole, Wyoming when Charley and Bob started working on a new idea: Why not make goggles more like house windows which are heat-sealed and double-paned? Leveraging Bob’s orthodontic skills, they started working on a prototype that would keep the snow and moisture out on powder days. They soon had a dual-lens, thermal-sealed ski goggle design. The rest is history with Smith Goggles. I use them to this day.
- The Scott Boot: In the early 1970s dad and I met Charley in Sun Valley to have him custom fit me for a pair of new superlight single buckle ski boots that Charley was working on developing with Ed Scott, the founder of Scott Sports. Soon they had developed a boot that revolutionized the ski industry. The Scott Boot was an innovative approach to design that was much lighter and more responsive, and yet still very warm (tagged as SuperHot and Superlight). I wore those boots through four season passes at Snowbird, and never even wore socks because they kept my feet so toasty warm.
- Aero Bars: When Charley showed up at the 1986 Ironman World Championships with his aluminum aerodynamic handlebars, there were plenty of doubters. Nobody in the triathlon community used aero bars back then. Then Charley won his age group by 42 minutes, and everyone took notice.
Charley is the man credited with designing and “bending into shape” the first aerodynamic handlebars that Greg LeMond used to win the 1989 Tour de France by 8 seconds, the narrowest margin in Tour history (The Greatest Comeback in Cycling History). As Charley told the story, he became friends with Boone Lennon, then head coach of the U.S. Alpine Ski Team. One day, Lennon told French he had an idea for an unusual new handlebar. The design allowed a cyclist to rest their elbows and hands in front and put the rider in a more aerodynamic tuck. French built the first prototype of his friend’s vision out of wood. They took turns bolting the crude device to their bikes; test rides by the men showed that it could make a cyclist faster. The rest is history.
WWII: The Greatest Generation
Charley and my father belonged to that select fraternity who returned from a war that cost 80 million lives. Charley joined the Navy at 17 and was later shipped to Pearl Harbor, where the scars of the December 7th attack were still painfully visible. He told me, “I got off the boat, looked around at the grim scene of all the destruction, and thought, this is serious.”
USS Cleveland (CL-55) in 1944
After sneaking in some surfing at Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, he was shipped off into the Pacific war, working below deck as a machinist on the USS Cleveland, a light cruiser with a crew of 1,200. Four-star General Douglas MacArthur came onboard Charley’s ship at one point. French told me his team was tasked with helping to make a gift for MacArthur, so they fashioned a set of ashtrays from artillery shells. MacArthur gave French and his shipmates one of his corn cob pipes to say thank you.
“We threw it overboard,” French said.
After a couple of sea battles that included watching a torpedo go by, Charley ended up in Tokyo harbor on the very day of the peace signing with Japan to end the war. General Douglas MacArthur presided over the ceremony as the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. Walking through the rubble of Tokyo, he saw a Japanese man with a peg leg and patch over his eye and thought, “We probably did that…”.
3 Things I Learned From Charley
- “Embrace the Gym” – Charley told me he took it up in his 70s—half-hoping it wouldn’t work and he could stop, he joked. Alas, pumping iron bore results. He now has a strict routine he follows 2 days a week working hard with body core strength but without the use of weights. As he told me – “I’m feeling stronger than I was one year ago,” with this new workout routine. At 99!
- “Balance is Critical” – A key to his progress at 99 is working hard on his balance. Whatever he is doing, lifting a barbell in the gym, catching a medicine ball, or even brushing his teeth – he tries to do it on one leg to work on balance. “If you fall at my age, you are wrecked.” And yes, he said surfing for balance is very good. ☺
- “Always Have Goals” – Goals keep you focused; they keep you positive. If you’ve trained hard, and you think you’ve done everything right, even if you don’t win, you’ll feel good,” Charley explains. Put races on the calendar to get you training. You need goals. And don’t be afraid to pivot into something new. You can’t ski bumps for the rest of your life!
Charley French continues to be a fountain of inspiration for all of us. Age does not have to define our limits. God bless you, Charley—here’s to your 100th birthday this August.
I welcome your comments below about what inspires you to keep pushing forward as you age?
My inspiration to stay in shape is so that I can get out in nature and see wildlife.
This was a great article about an inspiring man. Thank you Mike!