70-Year-Old World Record Swimmer Seeks 14th World Title After Hip Surgery

Posted on: November 13th, 2024 by Our Team

Five years ago, lifelong swimmer Penny Noyes, now 70, was uncoached and training in her favorite local pool which she was sharing at the time with a youth swim club. She was on a quest to break a 50 freestyle world record that she had missed by a mere three one-hundredths of a second twice in the prior weeks. She asked the youth club coach, Dee, if he would watch her 50 free to help figure out how to shave off time to break the record. He tweaked her start, and in the next meet she broke it by two-tenths.

“He then asked me if I would be interested in training with his Southern Kentucky Swim Club senior team members who are between ages 13 and 17,” Noyes explains, “and I started the next day.”.

Since then, Noyes has amassed nine world records and 17 U.S. records in the 65-69 Masters age group and another four world and U.S. records in the 70-74 age group. While she is a self-acclaimed ‘drop dead sprinter,’ breaking records in the usual 50 free, 50 fly, and 100 IM, she attributes training with the kids to her ability to target records in new, grueling, longer events, like the 100 and 200 butterfly, 200 and 400 IM long course, and more.  With no plans to slow down, she has her eyes set on breaking even more U.S. and world records in her new age group.

Noyes began swimming at the age of nine and qualified for the trials for the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. She competed at the University of Massachusetts where she became the first female recipient of a Title IX scholarship in school history. She also played on both the women’s and men’s UMass water polo teams. To top it off, she is an accomplished triathlete having made USA Triathlon’s Team USA in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

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