She started Masters swimming at 46. She died with more records than Michael Phelps.

I have had the privilege of knowing many great athletes through the years. But the best athlete I ever got to compete alongside was Margot Pettijohn.

Margot was the star of the Masters swim team I have been part of for the past 22 years. She holds more world and national records than Michael Phelps could fathom. On a team filled with truly excellent swimmers, Margot, who was about 5-foot-2, was the competitor and the person we all looked up to.

She died this past weekend after a short battle with a virulent form of lung cancer at age 72. The news was stunning. Margot was an absolute stud athlete, in the kind of shape most of us can only dream about. Her death is beyond my comprehension.

We tend to focus on athletes who are rich and famous: the ones who win Super Bowls and major golf and tennis championships, NBA titles and Stanley Cups. That’s understandable. Margot never swam in a meet that was televised and never made a dime because of her prowess in the pool.

But she loved to compete. And she inspired others, myself included.

She took up Masters swimming at 46 when her two daughters were getting ready to go to college and joined the newly formed Montgomery Ancient Mariners, still the best name ever for a group of old swimmers.

In a piece written for Swimmer magazine about a year ago, she told teammate Linda K. Foley that when she began to swim in meets, she was so bad that when she finished a swim, she often got a “pity clap.”

That’s what happens at Masters meets when someone who is either very old or very slow comes chugging in long after everyone else in the pool has finished. It is impossible to imagine that happening to Margot.

Her two passions were swimming and horses, and she began working out at least five days a week once the competition bug bit her. When I began to swim with the Ancient Mariners, what struck me was her genuine enthusiasm: She always was the person waiting for you after you swam an event, always with something encouraging to say.

There are two national championship meets for Masters swimmers: short-course yards and long-course meters. No one knows exactly how many times Margot won national championships. The only thing that limited her titles is that most national meets allow swimmers to enter no more than five individual events.

She always swam the 200 butterfly and the 200 breaststroke, arguably the two most difficult events in swimming. In the 200 fly, your stroke can fall apart toward the finish, and in the 200 breast, the same thing can happen to your kick. The pain is almost indescribable.

There’s a joke among swimmers (especially old ones) that the 200 fly is an IQ test: You swim it, you flunk. If you think I’m exaggerating, go find an old video of Mark Spitz swimming the final length of the event in the Mexico City Olympics. It can happen to anyone.

Margot always would jump on the block before a 200 fly, look at me and say, “I’m about to flunk another IQ test.”

And then she would take off at the gun and break another record. She was that good.

I have never won a national championship individually. For me, finishing in the top 10 is an accomplishment. Once, though, I came close, finishing second in a 50-meter butterfly at long-course nationals. I remember staring at the “2” next to my name on the board and wondering whether it might be a mistake.

It was Margot who told me it wasn’t. She was standing there, screaming, “YOU FINISHED SECOND!” as if it were the greatest swimming achievement since Spitz’s seven gold medals in Munich.

This from someone who could very much relate to Tiger Woods’s “second place sucks” declaration of 20 years ago.

We always recruited Margot to swim mixed relays — two men, two women. Because she was a few years older than most of us, her presence would put us in an older age group and, because she could outswim any woman even close to her in age, she was always the key to any success we had.

Regardless of where we finished, Margot always reveled in it. Once, after we finished a surprising third in a mixed medley relay, she clapped her hand on my back and said, “Let’s go collect the hardware!”

Phelps was asked once what he had done with the two bronze medals among the 28 he had won at the Olympics. “I have no idea where they are,” he answered.

My guess is the same was true of Margot, but she knew that bronze medal was a big deal to the rest of us.

The last time I saw her was in late August. I spent the summer working out on my own, and because I was in such awful shape I didn’t dare go near a team workout. I showed up at the Bethesda pool on the last Sunday of summer practices to try a 50-meter fly. I wanted to find out how fast (or slow) I was so I could measure my progress.

When I walked on the deck near the end of the 5,000-meter workout — which I wanted no part of — the first voice I heard was Margot’s.

“John!” she screamed. “We [she and her husband, Ken,] saw you on the ‘NewsHour’ the other night! You did great!”

Before I could respond, she ducked her head in the water, pushed off and continued the long freestyle set everyone was swimming.

Margot and several of my friends hung around to watch my 50 fly. It wasn’t very good but a little better than I expected. Margot thought I looked wonderful but said: “You need to get back to team practices. That way you’ll really be ready when you start swimming meets again.”

She was, of course, right. That’s what I need to do. But going back to Ancient Mariner practice is going to be difficult for all of us in the coming months. It will be impossible to look at Lane 2, Margot’s lane, and not see her racing up and down the pool, making what we all know hurts like hell look easy.

At the end of Foley’s piece, Margot talked about the future: “I want to be one of those really older swimmers who everyone marvels at,” she said. “You know, the one who, when they swim an event, everyone says, ‘I want to be like her.’”

Being a “really older swimmer” may be the one and only goal Margot failed to accomplish. But the rest? We all marveled at her for years, and every one of us would love to be like her.

Except no one I have ever met comes close.

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She started Masters swimming at 46. She died with more records than Michael Phelps.