Ping-Pong Champs Still Winners at 89, Even 100

Les D'Arcy is a fitness maniac with the buff muscles and flexibility to show for it. He's a "legend" in Britain, a seven-time world champion featured in the new film "Ping Pong."

And, by the way, he's 89.

D'Arcy is one of eight ruthless competitors vying to win at the 2012 World Table Over 80 Tennis Championships in Inner Mongolia, testing their training, resolve and agility before nearly 2,000 spectators.

The film, directed by brothers Hugh and Anson Hartford, opens in 15 cities this weekend after premiering in Los Angeles and New York earlier this week. Its release is part of Cinedigm's new Docurama series, bringing seven award-winning documentary films in seven weeks, from April 22 through June 16.

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Directed by British brothers Hugh and Anson Hartford, the film paints intimate portraits of the competitors, using the Ping-Pong table as a backdrop for an exploration of aging and death.

"We knew that we could have a sports film but, ultimately, it was just secondary to where the narrative would take us," said Anson Hartford, 35. "We were interested in the experience of growing old and what it was like. ... That's what holds the film together.

"We admired [the characters] and their approach to life and the fact that they were fully engaged in it."

Courtesy of Cinedigm / Docurama

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D'Arcy, a former RAF pilot, overcame a sickly childhood, dropped out of school at 14 and has devoted his life to weight training and Ping-Pong.

He's also a poet and opens the film with his mantra, a stanza from writer Napoleon Hill: "Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man, but sooner or later the man who wins is the one who thinks he can."

Hugh Hartford, 33, acknowledged that poem is "very much the heart of the film -- the power of the mind."

But D'Arcy's fellow British competitor, Terry Donlon, 81, is not so healthy. He has fought a lung collapse, heart disease and prostate cancer.

"They say you can't have sex," he says in the film about his Ping-Pong prowess and dream to be world champion. "Alright, but I will prove them wrong again."

In the match point round, however, Donlon gasps for air, grabbing his lung inhaler and struggling to maintain his agility.

"I want to play as long as I can," he says. "I don't want to sit down. I don't want to die."

By the film's end, his cancer has returned, this time in his bone and doctors give him a death sentence, but one that takes a surprising twist.

The Hartford brothers were inspired to make the film after seeing a photograph of Ping-Pong player Dorothy Delow, who was 97 at the time and playing in the world finals in Rio de Janeiro.

"She was wearing her Australian sports kit and it struck me there must be others," said Hugh Hartford. "There's a story to it."

She was featured in a minor role as a 100-year-old in the documentary, which took the Hartford brothers three years to film. In all, they found eight compelling characters from five countries.

Ursula Bihl, an 89-year-old German and the doubles reigning champion, has a heart problem.

"Walking 14 steps is difficult for me," she says in the film. "A nightmare for me would be to live paralyzed. ... I would like to die at the tennis table -- but not that soon."

Inge Hermann, also German and 89, went to live in a senior home in 1997 after her husband of 40 years died of cancer.

"Suddenly, the food didn't taste good anymore when there is not one to eat it with," she says in the film.

Hermann's health had begun to fail after a series of strokes and falls

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ping-pong-champs-winners-89-100/story?id=19291051

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