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| Evergreen sprinter Merlene Ottey. |
Tucked down among the entries for next week's European Athletics Championships was the name of the Slovenian sprinter Merlene Ottey. Ottey, now 52, was included in Slovenia's squad for the women's 4x100m relay.
If she makes an appearance in the event's heats on Saturday 30 June, she will be the oldest person to compete in the European Athletics Championships, beating her own record set two years ago in Barcelona when she anchored the Slovenian quartet.
There is a question mark over whether Ottey will be asked to don her spikes this time as she is only the fifth fastest member of their squad, although she ran a season's best of 11.82 when she finished third at the Slovenian Cup meeting in Maribor last Saturday.
However, she remains the embodiment of the European Athletics mission statement 'Your Sport For Life' and it is a huge testament to her appetite for the sport that she will be rubbing shoulders on the plane to the Finnish capital with team mates more than half her age.
In addition to various records for longevity, the Jamaican-born athletics legend's achievements include having competed at a record seven Olympic Games and winning nine medals.
Ottey, who claimed her first Olympic medal at the Moscow Games in 1980, knows Helsinki's Olympic stadium well after having won a 200m silver medal there at the inaugural World Championships in 1983.
Another 'Golden Oldie' going to Helsinki will be the 41-year-old Serbian high jumper Dragutin Topic, who cleared a world veteran's (over 40) record of 2.28m in Belgrade last month.
Topic is still the youngest ever continental champion in his event after winning at the 1990 European Athletics Championships as a teenager, just three weeks after winning at the World Junior Championships, and he will bookend his career next week by becoming the oldest high jumper ever to compete at the Championships.
He also appeared at 1994 and 1998 European Athletics Championships, the latter was also staged in Helsinki where he finished fifth in the defence of his title four years earlier.
'My jump of 2.28m gives me hope that I can make the finals in both Helsinki and at the Olympic Games in London, and that I will be among the top 12 in both competitions. I feel I'm close to going over 2.30m again,' said Topic recently.
'I seem to defy logic. You are supposed to lose speed and jumping ability as you grow old but I think I've still got most of what I used to have,' he added.