A new start after 60: ‘I became a powerlifter at 71 – and I’ve never felt so good about myself’

Peeps Nicol was newly widowed, ‘really unfit’, and struggling with MS when she first visited her local gym last year. Now she can deadlift 55kg and has begun competing

At the supermarket recently, a woman fell over in front of Peeps Nicol and practically landed at her feet. The woman had been pushing a walking aid and was large. As her husband tried to help her up, Nicol “got her under the arm, and got her back on her feet. I thought, I’m a powerlifter now. I can do this.”

Nicol is 71, and in March she entered her first powerlifting competition. She only joined the gym last year. “I feel like I’m really coming into my own. I’ve never felt this good about myself,” she says. “Maybe I was trained that way by my mother and society. I was always slightly to the back of my husband. It was his wishes … I can’t imagine doing what I am doing now in any of the preceding years.”

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