The day after he turned 100 in 2022, Lester Wright ran the 100-meter dash in 26.34 seconds, setting what was believed to be a world record and becoming the fastest known centenarian.
As a crowd of 38,000 stood and cheered, he set off down the track at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia, one of the country’s premier track meets, wearing a running singlet, tights to his knees and two thin ponytails braided by his daughter. Wright, a slender World War II veteran, swung his arms rhythmically and lifted his knees high.
The only centenarian in the nine-man field, he crossed the finish line in seventh place, ahead of 86- and 92-year-old competitors. Runners congratulated him. Reporters crowded around.
“When I came here, I was a little bit nervous,” he said. “But when I saw the crowd and everything, I fell right in with it.”
Wright died on April 20 at his home in Long Branch, N.J., his daughter Doreen Wright, who cared for him, said. He was 103.
Tributes offered after his death have celebrated Wright’s 2022 performance. But for reasons that are not entirely clear, his time was never submitted to U.S.A. Track & Field, the sport’s national governing body, for consideration as a world record.
Ratification of records involves an application process that is complicated and, for seniors, often perplexing. The organization requires documentary proof that includes signatures of race officials, certification of the track’s automatic timing system and a photo image taken at the finish line. Because of those requirements, many age-group records set by older runners are never confirmed.
In Wright’s case, track officials said, the image of his race captured at the finish line by a high-speed camera, which records each runner’s time to a thousandth of a second, may have been lost in a computer glitch.
Wright is considered the fastest centenarian to have run 100 meters, but he is not the official record-holder in a sport governed by arcane rules. Toshio Kamehama of Japan, who ran the 100-meter race last year, when he was 100, in 26.74 seconds — four-tenths of a second slower than Wright’s time — holds that honor in the 100-104 category.
“It was an awful situation,” Elliott Denman, a founder of the Shore Athletic Club in New Jersey, to which Wright belonged, said in an interview. “As far as we’re concerned, he is the world-record holder.”
Wright was unaware that his feat had never been certified, according to his daughter and Mr. Denman.
But whether he set a record or not, his 2022 performance was “phenomenal,” said Scott Trappe, who studies aging athletes as director of the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind.
Dr. Trappe did not study Wright, but said that his ability to run at all at his age — let alone faster than any other centenarian in the world — suggested that “he had some excellent physiology, probably better than some college students.”
Lester Edward Wright was born on April 29, 1922, in Long Branch to Helen Wright and was raised by his grandparents, Allan and Rosabella (Taylor) Wright. He ran track at Long Branch High School before joining the U.S. Army, where he rose to the rank of sergeant.
Wright, who was Black, served in the 4176 Quartermaster Service Company during World War II among segregated units that helped supply the front lines and bury dead comrades.
When his company entered Bastogne, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge, they found “bodies in the gutters, on the rooftops, on the side of the road,” he told The Asbury Park Press in 2022. “I’ve never seen so many people that were dead.”
After the war, he attended dental technology school on the G.I. Bill and, according to The Asbury Park Press, he and his wife, Adele, opened the first Black-owned dental lab in Monmouth County, N.J., where they made prosthetic teeth for nearly 40 years.
“We made people in Monmouth County pretty,” he said.
It is not certain when he began running again. It may have been around the time he retired, Wright’s daughter said, at the suggestion of his son Lester Jr., who was also a runner. Together, they competed for the Shore Athletic Club.
At the Penn Relays in 1999, days before his 77th birthday, Wright won the 100-meter race in the 75-and-over division with a spectacular finish. He became a regular participant at the New Jersey Senior Olympics, in running events and pitching horseshoes.
Wright’s daily diet alternated between cream of wheat and oatmeal, his daughter said, and he did not drink alcohol. At 100, he trained for the 2022 Penn Relays — his first race in three years because of illness, he said — by walking a mile and a half from his house three days a week and then running home.
There was a simple reason for her father’s running, Ms. Wright said: “He enjoyed it. He had a lot of energy, and he kept moving.”
In addition to her, Wright is survived by another daughter, Carolyn McCain. His wife of 81 years, Adele (Fields) Wright, died in 2023. His sons Lester Jr. and Joseph also died.
Wright’s stellar performance at the Penn Relays reflected a continuing increase in the number of seniors competing as athletes, as people live longer and value exercise — which is “probably the best medicine we have,” Dr. Trappe said. By the mid-2050s, the number of centenarians in the United States is expected to quadruple to more than 420,000, according to the Pew Research Center.
Julia Hawkins of Baton Rouge, La., who began running after her 100th birthday and died at 108 in 2024, holds the women’s world records for 100 meters in the 100-104 age category (39.62 seconds) and the 105-plus category (1 minute, 2.95 seconds). Mike Fremont of Cincinnati ran a full marathon of 26.2 miles when he was 90; last year, at 103, he ran a mile race with the aid of a cane. Such performances show other seniors what is possible.
A day before the 2022 Penn Relays, Wright told a television interviewer that he did not race to lose.
“I don’t know how you can run to be second or third,” he said.
