A World Record Holder Was Off Balance. Then Came Advice And She Took It.

Carol LaFayette-Boyd, 83, holds seven world records. She finished 2025 No. 1 in the world in eight events, indoors and outdoors. How did she become so accomplished? She followed advice. Photo by Shaggysphotos.com.

By Ray Glier

Carol LaFayette-Boyd, 83, is as poised and focused as they come in Masters Track & Field competition. She wasn’t always poised and focused. In 1989, this woman who owns seven world records and shares another, needed grounding. She had lost her center.

Carol was 46 and said she had been grieving three years her nephew’s paralysis from a car accident.

“I was trusting that he would get better, and he didn't seem to be getting better like I thought he should, and I was crying and carrying on about it,” Carol said. “And then I heard a voice say, ‘Oh, you of little faith’.

“And I made a decision at that point. Nobody is stealing my joy. I don't care what, nobody is stealing my joy.”

When LaFayette-Boyd, who lives in Regina, a city in the Saskatchewan province of Canada, started running sprints and doing jumps at 50 years old, she competed without the backpack of grief. She was hellbent on keeping a firm grip on joy while still very much conscious of her nephew's condition.

Carol’s story matters to Geezer Jocks because many of the people I write about ease the burden of negative emotions with Sports. 

And many Geezer Jocks know that when wise advice comes their way it is not a command. It is an opportunity.

Have a little faith.

**

Here is more advice.

Lafayette-Boyd owns the 100-meter and 200-meter world record for women 75-79. She has the 200-meter world mark for women 80-84 and shares the 100-meter world record for the 100 for women 75-79 with Kathy Bergen.

Carol’s other four world marks are in the long jump and triple jump, respectively.

“I guess I’m competitive,” LaFayette-Boyd said. “I saw the world record for the 100 meters is 105 years old. I want to be 106 and do the 100 faster.”

Carol would have more world records if not for the terrific Canadian sprinter Karla Del Grande. "She's very gracious when I've broken some of her records," Karla said. "I tell her to keep setting the bar high for those coming after her. And that gives her a little more fire!"

Carol’s benchmark for all her success was 2003. She heard where a physiotherapist in Canada declared older runners should not do any static stretching, only dynamic stretching, before a workout or event. LaFayette-Boyd followed that dictum.

“I only do static stretching in the morning and after a workout, I do not do it anywhere near a workout,” Carol said. 

She did not have an injury from 2003 to 2014, quite remarkable for a sprinter in her 60s.

Here is an explanation of static vs. dynamic stretching. 

“I always wondered why it mattered, it didn't make sense to me,” Carol said. “But just recently, I had a piece of elastic, and I stretched it, and then it popped. And I thought, well, that's really because I stretched it fast and that's when it broke. 

“Now it made sense. What happens when you do the static before a workout you really stretch your body (and hold), and then you take off real fast, and something snaps.”

Lafayette-Boyd says she spends a lot of time on the floor…stretching. Every day for 30 minutes she stretches unless she is pulled out the door by one of her community duties, which includes the Saskatchewan African Canadian Heritage Museum  

“I concentrate on my hamstrings. And now, after an injury to my calves, I really concentrate on them,” Carol said. “I never thought about my calves before; they were just there. And for 31 years, I never, never worked on them like the rest of my body. After 31 years, they said to me, ‘Look, I'm tired of carrying you.’

“And so I had a string of calf injuries (2019).”

But one injury in that 11-year span (2003-2014) is noteworthy and is sound advice about dynamic vs. static stretching, if you didn’t know already.

If you want to know why Carol is still fit, it is genes, for sure, but it is also nurturing those genes with proper stretching.

**

LaFayette-Boyd will be 84 in May. She closed out 2025 No. 1 in the world outdoors and indoors in eight events. Carol wants to do just one indoor and outdoor event this year because of her duties with the museum and with her family. It is Black History Month in Saskatchewan and she pours herself into events.

She is “LaFayette” because an ancestor was a spy for Marquis de Lafayette, a Frenchman who had a momentous role as a major-general in the Continental Army and crucial to the American victory in the Revolutionary War. 

Carol celebrates that, as well as the story of the Black doctor who was fully trained when he arrived in Saskatchewan in 1898. Still, Dr. Alfred Shadd was not allowed to practice medicine on whites until he was asked in desperation to save the life of a white man, which he did.

The LaFayettes and Boyds are holding a reunion in Regina this summer. Carol is a principal organizer for an event that will draw 117 relatives.

The closeness of the family is why the accident that struck down her nephew treated her so harshly. Then Carol heard that voice and it helped her regain balance.

Sports, I am certain of it, has helped keep her in balance.

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