She looks pretty strong, the 100-year-old grand dame. Sure, she has had a little bit of work done over the years — OK, a lot of work, maybe more than Joan Rivers — but as newly minted centenarians go, you must admit, Indianapolis Motor Speedway has maintained herself pretty darned well.

Of all the major American sports venues, only Churchill Downs, built in 1875, has seniority on the Speedway. IMS is older than:

Fenway Park (built in 1912)

Wrigley Field (1914)

Ohio Stadium (1922)

Los Angeles Coliseum (1923)

Soldier Field (1924, but recently refurbished)

Michigan Stadium (1927)

Hinkle Fieldhouse (1928)

We live in a country where nothing lasts particularly long, where everything is built with planned obsolescence in mind. Consider the RCA Dome, originally the Hoosier Dome, which opened in 1984 and was imploded last year. Most of the great old buildings have been reduced to rubble — Yankee Stadium, Ebbets Field, the original Boston Garden and Chicago Stadium. Everybody wants the newest toys, the lushest luxury suites, the biggest video monitors. It’s all about creating revenue, keeping up with the Joneses.

The Speedway, though, she soldiers on. She endures. And she maintains her original charms, even if age has worn away some of her luster. What do you want? She’s 100 years old, for crying out loud.

She is a survivor.

She survived World War I; there was no racing at the Speedway from 1917-18. The place was used instead for military repairs and as a base for military aircraft.

She survived World War II; there was no race activity from 1942-45.

She survived the late 1940s, after the Speedway had fallen into a deplorable state of disrepair during the war, only to be saved and repaired by Tony Hulman.

She survived a spate of fatal crashes over the years, survived the split of open-wheel racing, survived regrettable races like the Formula One fiasco in 2005 in which only six cars started because of tire problems and last year’s NASCAR tire mess.

She has not just survived, but she has grown, changed, made accommodations to modernity. She added garages. She added safety-warning lights. She made helmet use mandatory. She added the SAFER walls. She was resurfaced with asphalt, added a medical center and a Hall of Fame, built a new pagoda.

She has seen plenty of physical changes. But she has maintained her capricious personality.

“In a lot of ways, really, it feels like nothing much has changed here since I started coming here in 1981,‘’ said Mike Hull, managing director of Ganassi Racing. "The way we approach this race, the things you do every day to prepare for the race, that hasn’t changed at all.’’

She offers up her history at every Indianapolis 500, but her life and times stand front and center during this year’s Centennial era celebration.

Earlier this week, I asked two former Indy 500 winners, Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon, "When you look at the 100-year history of this place, is there another era when you think it would have been cool to race here?’’

“It would have been nice to try them all, I think, from the start,” Franchitti said. "I just read a book about the 1920s; that was a pretty interesting era. I think to try each one would have been cool. There’s still risk, a lot of risk driving at the Speedway, but there was a lot more back in the day.

“I think going back to the ‘60s, all of that innovation, that would have been a fun part. Whether you’re driving in a rear-engine Lotus against a front-engine roadster and the next thing there’s a turbine car, all that kind of stuff. You go over to the (Speedway) Museum, and you see some of the weird and wonderful creations that people strapped themselves into here. It was pretty impressive.’’

One hundred years from now, will this place still be standing, and if it is, what will people think about the weird and wonderful creations these drivers wheel around the Speedway?

“The stuff you have seen people race around here is pretty crazy,‘’ Dixon said. "I guess the only unfortunate part about today’s racing is the cars are all very similar.’’

Hull agreed. "The big thing we’ve lost is innovation,‘’ he said. "Indy used to be all about innovation. That’s no longer the case, and that’s a shame.’’

When the Speedway was young, who could have imagined there being an F-1 track winding its way through the facility? After the Speedway’s first motorized race involved motorcycles — that was 1909 — who would have thought something called MotoGP would come to this place and thrill the multitudes?

If the 100-year-old grand dame could talk, she would have a whole lot to say about the scene Thursday morning inside the trackside media conference room.

There was Danica Patrick, the face of open-wheel racing, doing a media event for the "Got Milk?’’ campaign.

Imagine, then, that when this remarkable place opened in 1909, women were still 11 years from earning the right to vote in this country.

She has changed with the times, and yet, she has maintained her essence.