MESA, Ariz. _ She's a champion swimmer who didn't learn to put her face in the water until she reached retirement age. She's a world record holder, but has only the vaguest notion of her fastest times. She's a national champion in the backstroke who can tell you about the mechanics of the stroke, but would rather rhapsodize about the heavenly view one gets, swimming with her back to the world, sunny-side up.
Some people are born great, while others have greatness thrust upon them. So they say. Maurine Kornfeld sidled up to greatness in her own sweet time, letting it wash over her, while she paid attention to more important things.
Now the retired social worker, who didn't swim her first serious lap until just before her 60th birthday, holds 16 age-group world records, 26 U.S. bests and dozens of national championship titles. Recently, at the U.S. Masters Swimming Spring National Championship, the late bloomer from the Hollywood Hills bagged six more titles.
At 97, Mo Kornfeld is the oldest active member of the 64,000-member U.S. Masters Swimming. The menagerie of former high school and college swimmers, onetime Olympians and aquatic latecomers swim for fitness and _ if so inclined _ in regional, national and international competitions.
On the first day of the championship meet in suburban Phoenix, a sunburned woman looked across the riot of wet, spandex-clad bodies and spotted Kornfeld: "There's the queen." Addressing nearly 2,000 swimmers and spectators roasting in 102-degree heat, the P.A. announcer called Kornfeld's aquatic exploits "titanic." Head referee Teri White deemed Kornfeld, simply, "the star of the meet."
Her teammates on Pasadena's Rose Bowl Masters swim team will regale you with stories of "Mighty Mo" _ her ability to navigate two freeways to make workouts, her obliteration of most world records in the 95-99 age group, and the lowdown on the time she humbled a Frenchwoman who dared claim that she would be the dominant nonagenarian at the 2017 World Championships.
"That's all very nice," Kornfeld said of the effusive praise. "But, I mean, it's only swimming. It's not going to change the course of world events."
Indeed, as much as her swimming comrades talk about her records, they speak more passionately about the Kornfeld they know from the locker room, aqua aerobics class, and especially from the virtual salon she presides over while soaking in one of the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center's giant hot tubs.
"She greets me so enthusiastically every time I see her, I feel like I am one of her favorite people," said Nancy Niebrugge, a teammate at the Aquatic Center, located south of the historic stadium, which happens to be one year younger than Kornfeld. "Then, when I was around her a little longer, I realized she is that way with everyone. You feel special around Mo."
