In 1951, Gustaf Håkansson signed up for an endurance race traversing virtually the entirety of Sweden, only for his submission to be rejected because of his age. It had been determined that the 66-year-old had neither the strength nor the stamina to compete with 50 other racers half his age. Nevertheless, having ridden 600 miles to get to the starting line, Gustaf was there on race day in the saddle of his roadster. Amazingly, 5 days, 5 hours and 1,000 miles later, spectators were a little perplexed as a frail old gentleman wobbled over the line on a rusty old roadster with a flat tire……..a full day ahead of the next rider! The truth is, Gustaf cheated. Well, he didn’t actually cheat because he wasn’t even an official competitor, but he did neglect one rule the others were forced to follow: he didn’t sleep. While official competitors were forced to recharge at the end of the day and restart the next morning, Gustaf only took an hour to rest before continuing on. The time allowed him to put a 20-mile gap between him and the rest of the pack. Eventually, with only 800 yards or so to go, "steel grandpa” — as he became known in the villages he'd passed through — came to an abrupt halt. It wasn't sheer exhaustion that had stopped him; the old man's bicycle had suffered its first and only flat tire. Unperturbed, Gustaf dismounted and walked toward the finish line where, with only a few yards to go, he remounted the bike to cross the finish line at 2:15 p.m. on July 7, 1951. Gustaf's greatest satisfaction came from proving wrong the doctors who had assumed he was better suited to a rocking chair than he was on a bike. The Steel Grandpa continued to ride bicycles until his death in 1987 at the age of 102.
