At 79, breast cancer survivor Linda Ashmore has conquered open-water records and world championships. As the oldest female competitor in Kona, she proves that extraordinary endurance is built on grit, joy, and relentless motion.
Linda Ashmore is 79 and the will be the oldest woman on the starting line of the 2026 Ironman World Championship. (Photo: Courtesy Linda Ashmore)
Published September 30, 2026 02:54PM
What’s harder, swimming the English Channel or completing an Ironman?
For Linda Ashmore, it’s not about what’s harder — it’s about what’s more fun. The 79-year-old has done both epic endurance events, swimming the Channel twice and finishing a dozen Ironmans, and says she finds joy in the suffering. But if she had to choose? Triathlon, hands down.
“Even when it gets difficult, it’s enjoyable,” Ashmore, a former teacher from Dorset, England, said. “Even when I’m out there questioning, ‘Why am I here? What am I doing?’ It’s the way you keep going even when you’re searching for any reason to stop.”
As the oldest woman in this year’s Ironman World Championships field, Ashmore hasn’t found a reason to stop since she first picked up triathlon more than a decade ago. Prior to that, the lifelong swimmer focused on open-water events. In 2007, at age 60, she became the oldest woman at the time to successfully swim the English Channel. (And once the record she’d set was broken, she reclaimed it in 2018, at age 71.)
Then, in September 2012, at 65, Ashmore was diagnosed with breast cancer. The subsequent medical checks turned up something else: osteoporosis. Once she was through her cancer treatments, doctors suggested improving her bone strength with impact exercise, like walking. Ashmore, who as a girl was kept off any race longer than 150 yards while the boys ran the mile, had always idolized Roger Bannister. She wanted to run.
Some friends in her swim club had another idea. “They had started doing triathlons and said, ‘You’re an endurance athlete. Why don’t you give it a go?’” she said. “But I really didn’t think it was for me. I thought I was too old and that I couldn’t do it.”
A bit of nudging later, and Ashmore entered her first sprint triathlon at 68. She felt out of place at the start line, and not just because of her age.
“I arrived wearing my swimming costume and trainers and riding an old bike,” she recalled. “There were people with disc wheels and aero helmets who were helping me along, telling me what to do and explaining how everything worked. From that day on, I was hooked. I just loved it.”
Triathlon has since taken her all over the world, to Portugal, Wales, Mallorca, and, four times, Kona. The oldest British woman to complete an Ironman, she won the 70-74 age-group world title in 2017 in 13:42:50, more than 45 minutes ahead of her nearest competitor.
The sport has also connected the mother of three and grandmother of eight with others, and given her a way to inspire them.
“Triathlon has opened up such a new world for me, socially, physically and mentally,” she says. “My mission in life now is to encourage other people as they get older not to slow down,” she says. “It’s so easy to start saying, ‘Oh, I can’t do that.’ Yes, you can. You’ve just got to make the effort to keep moving.”
So how does Ashmore, who turns 80 at the end of the month, keep moving? She says she’s been lucky to avoid injury, but the self-trained athlete is also meticulous about strength training, which has increased over the past year. She has also upped the intensity of her training with more interval work and hills, while staying equally focused on recovery.
“Less is more for me. Each training session needs to be specific and have a purpose rather than just going out and running for the sake of running,” she said. ‘And I need a lot more rest at my age.”
As for her Kona goals, Ashmore is aiming to finish – an achievement that eluded her the last time she raced in Kona in 2018, when she felt weak on the run and had to drop out. She’s also the only woman in the 80-84 age-group (the divisions are determined by a racer’s age at year’s end), so while she’s not chasing a podium per se, she is chasing the clock.
“Initially, I thought about going under 15 hours, but I always have these outrageous ideas about what I can do. I’d certainly like to get under 16 hours,” she said. “I just like setting these challenges. If I don’t get there, fair enough. I’ll always have another go.”
