Norman Myers @ CLS

(24 August 1934- ) is a British environmentalist and authority on biodiversity.
He is a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences.
He is the father of long distance runner Mara Yamauchi, and former world rowing
champion Malindi Myers
(from Wikipedia – more on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Myers)

 

It all began one evening way back in the mid-1980s, when my wife and I checked in for a first visit to
Club La Santa.  My two daughters, aged 15 and 13, were instantly entranced at sight of the splashing
pool, the football field, the running track, the Olympic pool, the beach, the lagoon: the whole scene
grabbed them at a stroke. True, they had both enjoyed sport at school, and they had played hockey
and swum for the county, but they hadn’t done anything super special in performance.  They simply
saw sport as fun, and Club La Santa seemed to be just what they wanted.

 

Also on campus was another family from England, headed by a mum who ranked as a “good club
runner”. She entered the weekly half marathon, and my eldest daughter Malindi, who was a close
friend of the other family, said she would like to run alongside for as far as she could, perhaps five
miles out of the full thirteen miles.  I assured her she could be picked up by my car any time she
wished: no sweat.  In the upshot she completed the whole course hand in hand with  the “good
club runner.”

 

As is the way with such things, the following week Mara, the younger daughter, decided she did not
want to appear to be outdone, so she lined up for the half marathon too.  I expected she would not
keep up with Malindi, not by a long way, but 90 minutes later they appeared together, shoulder to
shoulder, around the final bend in semi-record time.

 

On return to England both girls decided to pursue sports a bit more seriously--swimming, cross-
country, whatever. I tried my darndest to persuade them to wait a few more years. (Yes, honest,
I did try, but it’s hard to be persuasive when your offspring demands to be taken to swimming
training at 5.30 in the morning.) 
Eventually Malindi switched to rowing, and a few years later she started to be selected for the GB
team.  Eventually (again), she competed at three world championships before she finally stood
on a podium and listened to the national anthem.  Guess what her dad was doing. 

 

Malindi then felt she had been to the top of her particular sporting mountain and she set aside her
oar for good.  But she still wanted to stay in shape, so she took to “running for fun.”  She displayed
her capacity for fun when she ran in the 2006 London Marathon. How did she make out?  “Well, I
finished 11^th out of 10,000 women—-and by the way, dad, I’m three months pregnant.”

 

As for Mara, she has run in a dozen marathons, including the Olympics when she finished sixth,
matching the best placing and time by any British woman.  Now that Paula Radcliffe seems to have
retired, Mara could soon rank as the best woman marathoner in Britain—or indeed Europe.

 

As for dad, he did not take to marathoning until age 50, when he bestrode the Boston course in
2 hours 38 minutes, worth third place in his worldwide age group (though several miles behind
Malindi and Mara’s times).  His main memory: “It made the beer taste better.”

 

And it all began at dear old Club La Santa.