This water baby now nearing 90

At 88, Katherine Johnstone trains three times a week at 6am. Picture / Amos Chapple

Let's hope our Commonwealth Games athletes take a leaf out of Katherine Johnstone's book when they go to Melbourne next month.

At 88, the Te Aroha great-grandmother is training hard to win more medals and break more records after taking up competitive swimming in her 70s.

Mrs Johnstone has swum all her life, but an earlier attempt at a competitive career was cut short when she was hit by a car as a 17-year-old.

After recovering, she went nursing, got married and had three children, and it was not until she was 74 that she got back into competing.

It began with a chance meeting at a pool with a woman about her age who was swimming 80 lengths while Mrs Johnstone had planned on 20. Things changed when she heard the woman was training for a masters' competition.

"I began to do 80 lengths also," she said.

Since then, her biggest coup has been nine world top 10 rankings and several New Zealand records at the FINA World Masters Swimming Championships in Christchurch in 2002.

She swims all strokes except butterfly, and won four silver medals and one bronze in the 85-89 age group at the world champs - and that was after her doctor begged her not to enter because she needed a heart valve replaced.

"He said, 'You must not go, Kath'. "I said, 'You'll have to give me a very good reason'.

"He said, 'You might die'.

Mrs Johnstone's response: "That's all right, I don't care about dying. What a wonderful way to go."

The doctor said that even if she did not die, she risked a heart attack or stroke.

She was not worried about the heart attack, but felt disturbed at the thought of a stroke, and asked the doctor to rate her chances out of 100.

"You're far too active, I don't think you'll have a stroke," he admitted.

He got the "active" part right. During our interview, Mrs Johnstone bounded around the grand old Te Aroha hotel that is owned by her son and where she has lived for the past two years, dressed in a white shirt and blue swimsuit, getting ready for a photo session in the water at the local swimming pool.

She goes to the pools three times a week at 6am, swimming 1500m - her favourite freestyle distance - in at least one of those sessions.

Swimming sits amid three sessions a week of croquet (which she also plays to a national level), two of indoor bowls, and one each of bridge and mah jong.

She is training hard for a local masters swimming competition next month, but is looking ahead to future international events.

"My aim now is to keep living 'til next year when I'll sneak into the 90-94 category and then the world's the limit."