By Pamela D’Mello

Posted on 3 June 2026

This article on veteran/masters Goan athlete Maria Imelda de Sousa was written and published in Dignity Dialogue magazine in October 2014, when she was nearly eighty years old. On 31 May 2026, a 91-year-old Maria Imelda showed up at the Athletics Stadium in Santa Cruz, Goa for the 3rd National Women Masters Athletics Championship, 2026, Goa. Competing in the 90 plus category, a much-frailer Maria Imelda de Sousa won gold in the 2 kg shot put, javelin and 100 metres sprint, clocking the latter in 44 seconds, despite being on a largely liquid and vegetable diet for the past few months, as she told reporters.

This article, being reprinted here, traces her journey into veteran sports and the spirit of active community participation, that fueled it.

Dignity Dialogue, October 2014

Septuagenarians that sprint are not exactly thick on the ground, so we were keen to meet her. As it turned out, it was difficult to even get an appointment with the lady. It would seem that for seventy-nine-year-old retired school teacher/headmistress and veteran athlete, Maria Imelda Emilia Bernadete Fausta de Sousa, aka Maria Imelda — life definitely began post retirement.

While we were trying to catch up with her, she had been ensconced  for two days at the state central library, tracking down colonial archives in the  Portuguese language, for the names and tenures of every single parish priest that served at her hometown church in Mapusa, from 1594 to date — this, intended for a parish publication.

Next on that hectic week’s crowded agenda was tackling the culinary arts (not exactly her forte, she admits) by participating in a cooking competition, again at the local parish. For this, Maria Imelda was going to try her inexpert hand at preparing Pataleos, a local seasonal delicacy of ground rice flour, stuffed with jaggery, coconut and chana dal, steamed in fragrant turmeric leaves.

“I never cook but I’m going to try this out”, she told Dignity Dialogue, having finally agreed to squeeze in an interview, between her myriad voluntary chores for the community in the small town of Mapusa, 12 km from capital Panjim. Apparently, a comfort zone is not a place, this retired government school teacher, cares to linger in for too long.

She’s certainly a household name in the community, but the wiry, enthusiastic and energetic Maria Imelda, is more importantly Goa’s best known and oldest veteran athlete.

Veteran athletics sees women post 30 years and men post 35, compete in age categories. For a large part, long time athletes move into this senior veteran category, from the services and other occupational spheres. Not so, Maria Imelda.

She ran and won her first race at the age of 53 years in 1987, surprising herself and others when she beat much younger participants in an open category.  She won gold for the 100 m sprint and silver at the 200 m, though she was a complete amateur at the time, with no prior training.

“I never, never, never ran in school. I did not like it then” says she. But realising she was on to something, Maria Imelda has never stopped since, competing whenever the opportunity arises for veteran athletes.

She’s run road races, mini marathons, commemorative runs, walking races, besides sprints. In 1994,  much after retiring from her government teaching job, she officially joined the Goa Veterans Athletic Association, affiliated to the National body of the same nomenclature, now renamed the Masters Athletic Federation of India.

Maria Imelda is a regular participant and winner at the State level Veterans Athletic Championships and at the  zonal and national Veteran’s Championships, participating at the Bhopal, Kanpur, Cape Camorin, Chennai, Kharagpur and other meets. Her list of wins are too long to even list, picking up medals steadily over the past three decades.

At 78 years and participating in the 75+ age category at the state meet, Maria Imelda ran the 100 m sprint in 25.5 seconds, claiming the race in 2012. Based on her performance at the 2012 Bangalore national meet, where she took third place in the 200 m and second place in the 400 m (running that in 2.47 minutes) — she was selected to represent India at the World Masters Athletics Championship at Porto Alegre, Brazil.

“In 2013 though, I was busy, having been selected as a delegate for the first national convention of the Small Christian Community meet in Goa”. So Maria Imelda skipped Brazil. Earlier, an ill relative prevented her participating at the Kuala Lumpur Asian Championship in 2010-11, though selected.

Funds to compete abroad are not easy to come by either. So, though selected for international meets in Australia, Japan, Malaysia and South Korea, they have not materialised.


At  an Asian championship fortunately held in Bangalore one year, Maria Imelda was able to represent India, picking up  gold for the relay and  silver at the 400 m.

Though Maria is quite the professional veteran athlete now, she has not fought shy of participating at fun events and informal runs by rotary and lion clubs, either in her local town or elsewhere in the small state. She seems unstoppable.

In between  professional races, she’s at every commemorative run, marathon or walking race, easily the oldest participant to reach the finish, as she was in 2012,  at a 6 km mini marathon organised by a local college. She was 78 years then. It was all of this that saw her take her place among Goa’s sports persons in carrying the torch for the Commonwealth Games, when it came through Goa.

Expecting to touch 80 in December this year, Maria Imelda is looking forward to serious running as well, where she will graduate to the 80+ category at state and national veteran meets. How will she meet the health, fitness and medical criteria, I ask? “Why not? Now I’m okay I will run. I’ve got good doctors”,  she says, dismissing the fall she sustained and a hairline wrist fracture while taking the stairs to her apartment this May.

“Not long ago, I had a compressed vertebra in November of the year. I consulted my doctors, and by February, a few months later, I ran the 100 m sprint in 24 sec, winning a state race”, she relates, optimistic about her body’s propensity to mend on the quick.

One suspects though, it’s more mind over matter, going by the inspirational quotes that Maria Imelda adorns her home with and that are clearly dear to her. “Don’t just do enough to get by. Do enough to get ahead” says one, while another goes, “The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm“.

How does she prepare for her sprints, I ask? “I don’t really have to train, except for national meets, when we practice at Campal grounds” she says. An active life, a restless spirit and an engaged mind is all it apparently takes for this lady.

As a contact person liasoning between her parish and the members of her ward, Maria has to hand deliver the monthly parish bulletin to forty households, conduct fund raising activities, sell tickets for “tiatrs” ( local theatre productions). “All that means climbing staircases, most of them three-storeyed apartments without elevators” she explains. In fact, an active life is what brought her to athletics, she muses.


As a younger government teacher and headmistress, who found herself burdened with ever more  responsibilities (as all willing workers tend to do) at schools sometimes involving a 50 km one way commute in trying circumstances, Maria Imelda reminisces having to run for erratic public buses and ferries from 6 am. “All that running for buses, probably equipped me for my life as a sprinter”, she quips.

Her activities encompass the cerebral  —- writing for magazines, picking up languages aside from the Portuguese/English/Konkani she grew up with, penning poetry, trying her hand at Portuguese scrabble competitions — anything to stay active, mentally and physically.

She’s had her share of trials in earlier decades but a supportive sister and siblings took the edge off caring for a large rambling colonial era mansion and nonagenarian parents.

“My mother was translating documents in Portuguese when she was in her nineties”, says Maria Imelda, seeing no reason to slow down either. For now, she’s holding another favourite maxim “Today is the first day of the rest of your life“, close to her heart.