He Wants To Break The Tape Not Battle The Red Tape. We've All Been There.

Tony Echeandia, 61, said the complexities from doctors and insurance trying to get his knee repaired have been maddening. Still, he is trying to make his way back to No. 1 in the world in hurdling.

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By Ray Glier

If he was a 20-year old world-class hurdler, Getulio Echeandia, Jr., likely would have had little problem getting the cartilage in his left knee repaired in 2024. Sponsors would have guaranteed it.

But Echeandia, who goes by "Tony", was a 60-year old world-class hurdler, No. 1 in the world in 2023 in his age class (M55-59), and a world-record holder in the 400-meter hurdles in 2019 (57.73). He doesn't make money at this game.

Still, Tony expected some understanding, if not a little more respect.

When he went through preliminary tests on his heart as part of the approval procedure for the knee surgery to repair the cartilage, doctors balked. They said there was something wrong with his heart. His EKG data did not match with a typical 60-year old. Apparently, they did not understand Tony had the fitness level of a man much younger, he said.

That’s no lie. He was put through tests, including the injection to speed up and slow down his heart, In the meantime, the $1,000 a month premium Echeandia paid for health insurance to cover medical emergencies like this was being wasted. 

Doctors have to cautious. The heart is risky business. Mistakes can be tragic.

Tony understood at first, but grew frustrated when they didn't explore deeper. Finally, Tony took out of his phone and demanded a doctor watch a video of him hurdling."

Tony is third in line in dark blue. He sets the world record in the 400-meter hurdles (M55-59) in 2019 in Ames, Iowa.

Oh”, the doc said. “I see.”

By the time the doctors moved forward with the approval process for the surgery, it was October and Echeandia had missed most of the 2024 outdoor season. The first surgery cleaned out the knee. The second surgery was going to repair the knee using his own cartilage. Then the insurance underwriters refused to cover the second procedure because of his age, he said. His fight with the bean counters had replaced the fight with the white coats.

Tony’s insurance lapsed in December. He had to cancel further fights for the surgery.

Now, for 2025, the 61-year old Echeandia is on his own trying to get back to race form.

Tony is training for the Puerto Rico national games in June and the USA Track & Field Masters Outdoor Championships in Huntsville, Ala., July 17-20. Look at his link at www.mastersrankings.com. Healthy, he can hang with younger men.

Read the rest of this story and ask yourself, “Where did you reach an inflexion point in your fitness journey? When was your reckoning?”

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Running matters to Tony. Maybe your hobby doesn't consume you like track consumes him, but he goes for it and that stubbornness needs to be honored.

“For the first surgery, they tortured me,” Echeandia said. “They did an EKG. They're telling me I have a problem with my heart. I said ‘Here’s what I do for fitness’ and gave them my workout plan. They didn't listen. Nobody listened. They all know everything.

“So they make an appointment for me to go see a specialist, which delays the surgery more. I talked to Allan Tissenbaum, a doctor and a sprinter, and he says ‘They're reading your cardiogram wrong. Tell them that your data is high because you're an athlete’.”

Tony’s voice was rising in exasperation as he lived it again.

“They cannot understand what it is that we do in Masters track, they just don't understand that we have a different system, and that our systems are more intact than most of the people our age.”

Echeandia takes some blame here. 2024 was the year he turned 60 and he was chasing the world record in the 300-meter hurdles (M60-64), which is held by the great German hurdler Guido Muller (42.31 in 1999).

Tony woke up early one morning in late March, 2024, and went to the gym. He did a leg press. No added weight. No added reps. He felt something in the left knee.

“Maybe I didn’t warm up enough,” Tony said.

That was the beginning of the discomfort and the ordeal with the medical community.

Inactive, Tony gained weight in 2024 and into 2025. There was some inflammation when he tried to run.

Then, about two months ago, Tony talked to another sprinter who told him about the Incrediwear knee sleeve.

The knee is weak, but Echeandia can still rotate the knee enough to run. He slipped on the brace and started to jog. No pain. Then he started training for flat ground 400 meter races. No pain.

“Every night I do some therapy to it,” Tony said. “I massage. I ice. I do STEM. I don’t have any pain.”

Echeandia said the Incrediwear sleeve is holding his knee together. He picked up the pace of his training.

Last weekend, Tony, who lives in Boca Raton, Fla., ran his first race since March 2024. Echeandia ran the 400 in 59.97 in a USATF-sanctioned meet in Miramar, Fla. He’ll take it….for now.

Tony is making his way back. This is a serious hobby for him. You can see by this training run below before his injury.

"I don't just arbitrarily train, doing this or doing that, I have a system of training that's taught to me by my coach,” he said. “He supervises it, and I put the workouts in, and he tweaks them, and we review it.”

Echeandia said his training before the injury was so on point he could run a flat ground 200 in 25 seconds, which was the first phase of matching Muller. Tony thought he could run the flat 300 in 39 seconds.

I asked Artificial Intelligence what the benchmark time is for a fit 60-year old to run 200 meters. The answer came back: 30 seconds.

“Twenty-five seconds was easy for me,” Echeandia said.

Can he get back to form with a bum knee? That won’t be easy, but Tony will lean on a lesson from his youth to give him some fortitude.

He was 15 years old and at a summer basketball camp run by the legendary St. John’s college coach Lou Carnesecca. Tony was good, so good he was on a hoops scholarship to Xaverian, a private Catholic school in Brooklyn. A teammate was Chris Mullin, a Hall of Famer and member of U.S. Olympic Dream Team.

Tony was a Puerto Rican in the midst of Irish Catholics at the camp. Inevitably, he jawed back and forth with an Irish Catholic kid. When it was done, Echeandia laid down to sleep and closed his eyes. The thug he was jawing with crept over and hit Tony in the face with the handle of a flashlight.

There was blood and broken bones in his face, including his nose. No cops.

“Big Tony”, his father, put the fear of God in the assailant. Tony, meanwhile, laid at home in pain and shock at a horrifying injury. Big Tony had enough. He made his son get up, lace up some shoes, and took him to the playground to shoot buckets. Tony shot the ball while wearing a plaster mask to heal the broken bones in his face.

“It was tough for immigrants and my family were all hard working people, but where did I get the toughness from? The women,” Echeandia said. “My father could be brutal, but my mother and my grandmother, my father's mother, they were real tough. 

“I remember my grandmother telling me she delivered my father standing up because they had bought new sheets and she didn’t want to stain them.”

So as he makes his way back in Masters track, Tony has that experience to lean on.

Here's the thing. Ask yourself today, “What do I have in my toolbox from the past to fix an issue?” Rummage around in your mind. Find that thing. Use it.

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