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79 MINUTES | WEST NEWTON The Masters Championships feature athletes between the ages of 50 to 101 competing not so much against one another as against mortality. Local director Bill Haney’s unsentimental, unpretentious documentary might at first look like outtakes from Cocoon as septuagenarians pole-vault, put the shot, and run the 400 meters. As it enters the lives of five of the women participants, however, the novelty fades and the quiet nobility of their efforts takes over. Especially when two of these fiftysomething athletes boast abs that would be the envy of athletes 30 years younger. Each of the five has already overcome her share of hardships: two are refugees from post-war Germany, one is a sharecropper’s daughter, another a two-time cancer survivor. There can be only be one winner in the race against death, but the specter of the final finish line makes the running that much more beautiful.
BY PETER KEOUGH
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