Running makes age just a number for ex-smoker who took up the sport at 58 in Hong Kong – at 71 she set her best 10k race time
- Sue Ko thought running might improve her lung health after she gave up smoking, and wanted to honour her brother, a keen runner who had died of cancer
- She trained for her first 10k race in Hong Kong aged 58, running in a group which she found motivating, then found a trainer who introduced her to trail running
Sue Ko was surprised when a colleague asked her to join him and others in signing up for the 2007 Standard Chartered 10-kilometre run in Hong Kong. She was 58 at the time and had never run before.
“I was on the brink of turning 60, not exactly an age to be taking up running,” says Ko, who at the time was chairwoman of the council of the English Schools Foundation’s Peak School.
She took up the invitation, and a love affair with running began. In the 15 years since, Ko has run 17 10km races, and notched her personal best time of 00:52:32 in 2019, at age 71. She ran her most recent 10km race in October 2021, finishing in a time of 00:57:59 – nearly 12 minutes faster at age 74 than in her debut race aged 59.
“An inspiration for me to take up running was a chance to honour the memory of my elder brother, who was a long-distance runner for most of his life and had died of cancer aged 73, a few months earlier,” says Ko, who grew up in Yorkshire in the UK and moved to Hong Kong in 1974 as a young wife and mother.
