Susan's 60 years of success

[richard]

SUSAN Halter swam in the 1948 Olympics aged just 19 - and nearly 60 years later is still picking up medals for her excellence in the sport.

Mrs Halter, of Dickinson Road, has just returned from the World Masters Swimming Championships in San Francisco, from where she returned home with four medals.

Mrs Halter, who has three children and seven grandchildren, swims at Park Road Pool every morning from 7am and keeps in amazing shape and spirit for her advancing years.

She said: "I met my husband in a swimming pool, got my first job in the swimming pool and met most of my best friends there too. Swimming seems to have influenced my life a great deal. I just love being in the water."

"I recently did a talk at an old people's home and they asked me about illness and how fit I was. I get a cold in the winter like everyone else, and I have fallen down the stairs like other people sometimes do. But I just get back up again. When I feel unwell, I just wonder what kind of vitamin will help me!"

As a young woman during the war, she was banned from competing because she was Jewish and managed to make it to London for the 1948 games because she had an aunt and uncle who lived in this country.

Mrs Halter ended up studying in London and settled after meeting her husband at the first swimming championships in the new state of Israel, in 1950. There she won four gold medals.

Good health has blessed Mrs Halter, although an accident at a swimming gala three years ago seriously damaged her shoulder.

Mrs Halter added: "I would like to keep swimming and swimming. Of course one gets tired, and I sleep a little more than I used to, but I don't have a reason to give up.


Source
nlnews@archant.co.uk
hornseyjournal.co.uk

Image: SUSAN HALTER: ""I love being in the water"" Picture: Dieter Perry