WMA is saddened to hear that David Carr, 2022 WMA Best Male Athlete has run his last race and passed on.  David celebrated receiving this award at the WMA Indoor Championships in Toruń, Poland earlier in the year.  This was a fitting tribute marking the many state, national and world age group records David has achieved over his long involvement with our sport. Many of us in the WMA family and community revere the time David and his daughter took to talk to us in Toruń.

2022 was an enormous year for David following his 90th birthday in June. At the WMA Championships in Tampere, Finland David won five gold medals. He set six M90 world records that year. David was selected as the 2022 WMA Best Male Athlete as a result of these accomplishments. David continued his excellence at the 2023 WMA Indoor Championships earning five more gold medals. He very much enjoyed the experience of his first Indoor event!

Bob Schickert recounts: Immediately after the 1987 WMA Championships in Melbourne Lynne and I were relocating from Melbourne to Perth and therefore took an interest in the results of athletes from Western Australia. David Carr was noticed by us when he won a silver medal in the M55 800m. Over the years since I have been fortunate to witness some of David’s outstanding performances. His achievements since 1987 are sensational.

The M70 800m was a very tactical race at the 2003 WMA Championship in Puerto Rico. David ran 2:25.14 and Earl Fee, an outstanding Canadian athlete and world record holder, ran 2:26.09. After the race, some Americans said “How much did Earl Fee win by? Nobody beats Earl Fee.” I was proudly able to advise them an Australian had just done that! The battles with Earl over the decades meant a lot to David.

His achievements are mind boggling indeed! He has set at least seventeen world age group records since 2007. David won thirty gold, nine silver and four bronze medals at WAVA / WMA Championships. He fondly remembered his first World Championship medal “My first World medal came at age 55 in Melbourne (1987) in the 800m. There were six heats. Winners of each heat and two others were in the final. At the 600m I was second and heard the coach call ‘One to beat Tony’. Thirty seconds later the silver was mine. Ecstasy.” David also fondly remembers that his wife, Pat, upstaged him at that Championship by setting a W55 triple jump world record in her gold medal winning performance.

On behalf of our global Masters athletics community, our condolences are extended to Pat and David’s family.