Dr. Peter Zelig Cohen doesn't profess to be much of an athlete.
He's a golfer with a handicap of about 25. That's acceptable for a busy 64-year-old without an exercise regimen, but hardly the stuff of tournament champions. And he hasn't even indulged that twice-weekly pastime at Green Oaks Country Club for the past year because of spinal surgery.
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Dr. Peter Zelig Cohen, with the plaque designating Pittsburgh's status as host of the 2005 Senior Olympics. (Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette) |
Yet Cohen will be one of the area's most active older adults in June 2005 when the Summer National Senior Games -- the Senior Olympics -- are staged here. Cohen, as much as anyone, is responsible for capturing the event for Pittsburgh.
The orthopedic surgeon and founding director of the UPMC Senior Sports and Fitness Program has been talking up the Senior Olympics ever since leading a UPMC research team to Baton Rouge, La., to study athletes at the July 2001 competition.
Cohen and Dr. Freddie Fu, director of the UPMC Center for Sports Medicine, are co-chairmen of the Pittsburgh Local Organizing Committee that submitted the winning bid for 2005 to the National Senior Games Association. Their committee will oversee the fund raising and other work that will go into staging games for some 12,000 athletes 50 and older 2 1/2 years from now.
Fu has the local government connections who were important to the successful bid. Cohen is the more hands-on coordinator who communicates directly with officials from the national association.
The Shadyside resident and lifelong Pittsburgher received all of his training at Pitt and UPMC and has practiced orthopedic surgery here since 1968. He stumbled upon information about the Senior Olympics in 1999, after starting the Senior Sports and Fitness Program.
"We realized, geez, what a secret this is," Cohen said of the national event, first held in 1987. "I was amazed [in Baton Rouge] at what I saw in terms of the people I met, the athletes I met. Their self-esteem was fabulous, not what you would get from the average people you meet in those age groups."
He's excited about having those same people here in 2005. He figures their example, and the participation of local athletes and volunteers, will draw the region's many senior citizens' attention to the benefits of healthy diets and exercise.
"People who come to my office in this elderly age group today don't just want to live longer, they want to live healthier, live more independently and have an overall active lifestyle," Cohen noted. "Exercise and fitness is one of the tools we provide that can do this."
And yes, he admits, "I don't work out as much as I preach," but it's hard to fit in among teaching, examining patients, performing surgery and spending time with his wife, two adult children and two grandchildren.
Add the energy he'll expend planning the Senior Olympics for the next 30 months, and Cohen figures to get plenty of vigorous activity, one way or another.
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