Malindi Elmore Interview
It's time to get inspired and entertained all at the same time today as we sit down with two-time Canadian runner Malindi Elmore to learn more about her extraordinary career! We find out what brought her into the sport of running and why she pursued distance running over the shorter distances. We also learn more about her unique experiences at the Athens Olympics and just what she had to go through post-Athens as she attempted to return to the Olympics in both Beijing and London. Added to this we find out more about how a simple suggestion from her husband helped her return to the Olympics in a completely different discipline 17 years later and just what lies ahead for a tilt at a third Olympics in Paris in three years time. It's another extraordinary chat that you will get much out of, so listen and don't miss out!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note this is an automated transcript that may contain errors.
COLIN HILDING: Hello, and welcome back to Off The Podium for another great athlete interview in our post-Tokyo, pre-Beijing, six-month span that we have lots of stuff to fill the time with. My name is Colin. His name is Ben. Say hi, Ben.
BEN WATERWORTH: Hi, Ben.
COLIN HILDING: Hi, Ben. That's the way Casper says hi.
BEN WATERWORTH: That's why I did it. In jokes. Hilarious.
COLIN HILDING: He says hi, Ben, as well, instead of Casper. But I'm really excited. I think we talked during Tokyo about this guest that the marathon, Canada had this really, I would say, kind of unexpected result or I guess at least great story with the result, and that our best finisher in ninth place was Malindi Elmore, who had previously competed in the Olympics 17 years earlier in a completely different event, different discipline, whatever you want to call it, decided to increase by about 40 times her distance from previous Olympics and kind of made this huge comeback. And I think I was excited when we had lined this one up because it's a fun story to tell, and it's a little bit of an underdog story, and we get to get all the way from the beginning to the end for her. Not the end. Not the end. Not the end. Let's not say that.
BEN WATERWORTH: This isn't 007. We don't just offer our guests. Yeah, I wish... Our research department failed us this time around because I would have loved to have known sort of records for appearances between Olympics. You know, is this a 17-year gap? You know, what's that? Three Olympics in between hand? Like, is this a record? You know, I'm sure it isn't. I'm sure there have been other athletes who have had a bigger gap between, say, their first and their second Olympic, you know, appearance. But yeah, it's fascinating. Such an interesting story. And, you know, kind of... It's not like she just hung up the boots after Athens and went off and did stuff and then came back. I mean, she attempted obviously to go to Beijing and London, which she talks about in here. And yeah, she said to change up the distance, you know. It's not like she was doing 10,000 metres and that sort of stuff and went to a marathon. I mean, from a 1500 to a marathon, that's a pretty big gap. So yeah, I will say listening and being involved in this interview has given me hope. And as you'll hear in this interview, that I could be joining her in Paris. So hey, there's still hope for me.
COLIN HILDING: For everybody out there who wants to be in the Olympics, but thinks they have no shot, listen to this. The very least, subscribe to her YouTube channel because I'm sure we'll get some pointers later on.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's better than this. It's way better than this. The interview is great. I'm not saying Malindi is not great, but this show in general, subscribe to her YouTube channel. It's better.
COLIN HILDING: Okay, let's rephrase that. Listen to this, and then when it's done, unsubscribe from us and subscribe to her YouTube because you're going to get a lot more fulfilment out of it.
BEN WATERWORTH: Exactly.
COLIN HILDING: Well, let's kick it off. The last episode any of our listeners are ever going to listen to, our interview with Malindi Elmore.
COLIN HILDING: Well, we could be bringing you an interview right now with an Olympian who had a distinguished career in the 1500 metre, going all the way up until the end of our Olympic career in Athens, but we're actually thrilled we get to talk to somebody who decided to make a little bit of a comeback and made a lot of waves just recently in Tokyo by not only competing in the marathon for the first time in our Olympic career, but finishing in the top 10, which I have to say, as a Canadian watching this, it was absolutely crazy just to see that you did this. We're thrilled to have Malindi Elmore on here today. Malindi, thanks so much for joining us.
MALINDI ELMORE: Hi, good to be here.
COLIN HILDING: We're going to have to start, obviously, all the way back at the beginning. We always like to ask our guests how you got into your sport, in your case, specifically just running. Is this something you just picked up during school? Was it just a hobby on the side?
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, it's funny because I always feel like I was a runner even before I was a formally trained runner competing, but I always just really loved to run as a little kid around the neighbourhood, up to get the mail. It was my favourite thing to do in PE class. I loved to play soccer because you could chase the ball. And then I realised you could take the ball away. And it was a whole different sport, which is what I started to get into when I was a little bit older in high school, kind of transitioned from soccer to more structured running.
BEN WATERWORTH: Now, one thing about growing up, I believe you're from the beautiful place of Kelowna. Now, I lived in BC until earlier this year. Being to Kelowna, I do quite like that part of the country. Kelowna renowned for its runners. Malindi, is this kind of a trend? You just kind of want to run around and keep warm in the winter, and I don't know, try and keep cold in the summer if you can.
MALINDI ELMORE: We're a medium-sized Canadian city, about 140,000 people. But going back the last 30 years, we had a really great coach. Well, two coaches, they were married, and they started the track club here, and they really produced some really amazing athletes, and they were also teachers, so they would kind of get kids from the school system, which is how I ended up in the club, recruited from the school meets that they put on. And over the years, there's been, for a city of our size, some pretty good talent developed. In fact, on the Olympic team in Tokyo, there were three of us from Kelowna, which I thought was pretty cool for a small city.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, that's a good ratio. I'm not going to math at the top of my head, but I can imagine that's a pretty good ratio for a city that size.
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, and one of them even managed to win a medal. He was on the four by one team. So there you go. We have a medallist from the track and field team who hails from Kelowna.
COLIN HILDING: Which one was it?
MALINDI ELMORE: Jerome Blake. Oh, second. Second leg. Yeah.
COLIN HILDING: That's one of the ones we didn't interview.
BEN WATERWORTH: I was going to say, the other one besides Andre that we didn't interview, yes.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, exactly. He's on the list now. Put it in a good word for us.
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, he's a cool story. He moved here as a kid from, yeah, it's Jermika because he's actually related to Johann Blake of the same last name. And I knew him. I coached in the track club about eight years ago when I was coaching. He was just a little kid joining the club, bouncing around, so I saw him kind of grow up. And same with the other athlete, John Gay, who ran the steeplechase. I also was coach in the club when he was an athlete and I taught at his high school briefly. So I'm not old, but now the kids that are not kids, they're adults now on the track and field team, and we are all now together as colleagues on this team.
COLIN HILDING: That's what's exciting. You get to go from being Olympian to coach to Olympian all over again, everything's come full circle for you.
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, totally.
COLIN HILDING: Now when you, I guess, went from high school track meets, did you eventually get recruited into university? Is that where you started running competitively?
MALINDI ELMORE: Well, I was running competitively in high school and I was having really good results. So I knew that I had opportunities to run post collegiately. I thought at the time I would stay in Canada, but I eventually was lured by Sunshine and Bougainvillea in February to the campus of Stanford University in California. I went there and visited in February and it sealed the deal for me that I was meant to be in California. So I spent five years there and competed in the NCAA before moving back home.
BEN WATERWORTH: Is that, say, maybe our Australian listeners who aren't so overly familiar with how that kind of works in North America, is that something that is common for Canadian athletes to kind of go and have a crack sort of at the US college, that NCAA sort of system?
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, the NCAA system is a really amazing competitive opportunity for developing athletes. And it also, I mean, if you can get a scholarship there, it's expensive to go to university in the States. But if you can get an athletic scholarship that pays your tuition room and board, you essentially come away with a degree without having spent more than about airfare. So it's quite attractive for Canadians. And you know, we have a similar enough education system. It is different, and you know, some of the nuances like writing SATs, which is common in the US, we're not used to doing that, but we have to to get there. There's some funny things, but overall, it's not that hard to attend an American university if you're Canadian.
COLIN HILDING: And from a lot of the runners we've talked to, both the distance runners and the sprinters, we find that you'll compete in all different distances, but everybody kind of has this as this is your speciality, and I guess for you, was it the 1,500-metre like from the beginning or did you just sort of eventually develop and or did a coach say, you know what, I really want you to go for the 1,500?
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, I was an 800-1,500-metre runner in high school. I did one 3,000 and I hated it. It was terrible. I bet I ran cross-country, so I ran World Cross-Country Championships when I was in grade 12 in Morocco, so I could do some distance. It was 6K, but I really felt like I was a middle distance runner. The types of workouts that I enjoyed doing were very much middle distance workouts, not distance workouts. So fast, really fast, lactic stuff on the track was really what I gravitated towards versus some runners come in and they love the long runs and the tempo runs and that kind of endurance stuff, which is sort of ironic because then in the end, I ended up being a marathoner. So I have to transition to doing that kind of work. But when I was younger, put me on the track to do fast hard reps and I couldn't get enough of that.
BEN WATERWORTH: I mean, growing up, we always like to ask this question to our guests in terms of Olympic aspirations. Was this something that when you got into running, this was always a goal? Were you sort of active in other sports where Olympics was just a goal for no matter what sport you did? I mean, kind of, was that always on the agenda for you?
MALINDI ELMORE: Well, I see in Collin's background an athlete from the 1996 Olympics winning a medal. And I would say that was the 1996 Olympics in Athens, or sorry, in Atlanta was a really meaningful viewing experience for me. And I was 16 and I watched that whole Olympics and was so inspired by it. And a couple of performances really stood out to me and one of them, well, there were two of them in particular, Clara Hughes, who won a bronze medal in the road cycling for women, and she went on to be Canada's most decorated winter and summer Olympian winning speed skating medals and cycling medals. And I loved her post-race interview with Scott Russell, just super inspiring. And then closer to my heart was Leah Pels and she finished fourth in the 1500 and also inspired me to great ends and sort of became a mentor after that. So I was 16 and I just, after that, watching that Olympic meet, I just started dreaming big that I wanted to aspire to be like Clara and Leah and kind of get to that level, not only athletically, but also they just really like resonated with me on a personal level of kind of, I don't know, energy that they exuded.
COLIN HILDING: I love to just hear Clara Hughes name drop. She is Winnipeg's hometown. Well, Cher is Winnipeg's hometown here. There's a building I mentioned in our show before that it's basically a giant mural of Cindy Clausen on one side and Clara Hughes on the other. That's all Winnipeg right there. But looking at your career just as it developed, you know, obviously you would go on to Athens, but just before there, you had a really good showing at the Pan Am Games, you know, finishing in the exact same spot that you just mentioned, the fourth place spot. Going into the Pan Am Games, and was that first of all, was that your first big multi-nation race that you had? And then going into that particular final, were you hopeful that you could have had a position that was close to the top three?
MALINDI ELMORE: You know, it's funny that you bring that up because I was thinking about the other day and how how much has changed since then. So making the Pan Am Games wasn't really on my radar in 2003. I had just graduated from university and just moved back to Canada. But I finished fourth, ironically, at the Canadian National Championships to Lea Pels and a few others. And none of them had declared interest to go on this team to Pan Ams in sorry, in the Dominican Republic. I went to also to Guadalajara. I was getting confused. But anyways, I was on the way back with my parents. I had just gotten off the ferry, and their cell phone rang. And in 2003, not everybody had cell phones. I didn't have one. And it was spotty reception. We were going through the mountains between Vancouver and Kelowna. And it was Athletics Canada asking me if I wanted this spot. They needed me to fax all this information, declaration of intent by midnight that night, because I had submitted the forms in advance, because I didn't know that I would even make it. And it was, I think back now, I'm like, we had to find a fax machine. And, you know, like it was, and they had a hard time getting a hold of me. Like we didn't have smartphones. We couldn't just pull this stuff up. It felt like a different era where you're on the side of the road trying to figure out how to get someone these forms by, you know, within a few hours. So we basically turned around and left a day or two later. It was a really quick turnaround. So, yeah, that was my first national team experience. And it was amazing. And I ran a personal best in that race, 410 something. And so I don't know that I even went into the race with the expectation of winning a medal. I just think I went in there to try and have a really great race and see how fast I could run.
BEN WATERWORTH: Does that then when you make that team and it's that close to an Olympic Games, do you all of a sudden automatically think, well, hey, if I'm on the team now and I keep standards going for the next, you know, 12 or so months, I could make that Olympic dream happen? Or was it kind of something that you thought, well, OK, maybe it's a bit too soon, Beijing's more realistic rather than Athens?
MALINDI ELMORE: Yes, that's funny because my coach believed in me for sure and thought that I could make the Olympics that following year. I don't know if I really thought it was realistic, but what I committed to was the process. So how good can I be if I really focus on this goal and I do everything right? And I know when I go to bed every night that I did everything in my power that day to be the best athlete I could be, which I've never come to that level of commitment before with myself. So that meant really, you know, saying no to things, learning to say no to things and really putting my head down and sleeping well, eating well, doing my second runs, doing my physio, doing my strengths, doing everything that I thought I needed to do to be the best athlete. And thankfully, that resulted in dropping eight seconds off my personal best and put me on the team. But it was more of a process-oriented decision than necessarily just the goal.
BEN WATERWORTH: Eight seconds off your personal... I mean, that's pretty crazy. You don't hear Michael Phelps or, you know, Sane Bolt going, hey, I just dropped eight seconds off my personal best today.
COLIN HILDING: And that's in like a 1600, yeah.
BEN WATERWORTH: You'd have no more time to run there. One, I mean, before the Olympics in 2004, I believe you competed at the University Games, got a bronze there. I mean, can you give us just sort of a rundown on what a University Games is like? I mean, are these held in high? Because I feel like we're always on the show. We're talking about, you know, Pan Ams, the Commonwealth, the World Championships, you know, things like that. But sort of the University Games is something that we don't often talk about. I mean, sort of how is that an event? And it's kind of how's the prestige level, I guess, when it comes to, you know, track and field athletes by looking at a University Games, if you can go to one.
MALINDI ELMORE: So there's the World University Games are the largest multi-sport event after the Summer Olympic Games, in terms of participation. It's actually a huge, huge event. And it's really a blast. I did two, I did Beijing, and I did Korea, 2001 and 2003. And they really are epic experiences, and definitely I recommend people do that if they get the opportunity. And I think the level of competition is really pretty high and pretty competitive for that age group. There's not that many opportunities for, you know, kind of the mid-early 20s to get that world level exposure, especially in events like track and field or in distance running, where you really peak towards your late 20s. So I thought just the whole experience of going to this world global championship was really valuable for me. And in terms of actual fun, it is so much fun, because, I mean, you're there with a whole bunch of university-age students, so how can it not be fun?
BEN WATERWORTH: So Keg is in pledging? It's just secretly behind the scenes and kind of all that kind of stuff?
MALINDI ELMORE: Well, but it's still athletes, right?
BEN WATERWORTH: Come on, Malindi, there's lots of it. Don't lie. Come on.
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, after the race is over. I did still manage to perform well. So, you know, I stuck around for a week after, and yeah, there was a lot of fun. But it's just it's really cool. And the host cities and the hosts, like LOCs, they put on a really incredible experience in both my cases. Like the opening ceremonies were mind boggling. And in fact, I went to the closing ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympics, and it paled in comparison, really. So, yeah, I think the World University Games are definitely undervalued and are like a really great stepping stone for a lot of athletes.
COLIN HILDING: One of the things with mid-distance running is that you don't have that in sprinting. You come right off the blocks, and it's basically everybody feels you don't even pay attention to competition. I don't know if you're quite at the point where it is in maybe a distance run, where it's all about biding your time. You want to get in behind a certain pack and wait for your moment. When you're at something like 1,500 metres, is there kind of a healthy balance between running strategically or just going all out and not even caring about your competition? You just got to get ahead.
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, the 1,500 is almost like a chess game. There are definitely tactics involved, and you don't know what other cards someone else holds. So I think that's partly why I loved it so much, is there's the pure fitness, and that even itself is like you need to be aerobically fit, and you need to be fast, fast. You have to be a fast. You have to be able to run 56, 57 seconds for a 400, and you also have to be able to log a decent number of miles. So there's that whole fitness component is really, I think, intricate for the 15-millimetre runner. And then there's the whole tactical side, and whether the race goes out fast and hard and you're just hanging on the back, or whether it's jostly, there can be a lot of movement. There can be a lot of elbowing. There can be shoving and pushing and guarding your space, anticipating when someone's going to make a move, deciding if you're going to be the one who makes a move first, covering moves. So it's definitely like a game, and you have to keep your head in it, and you have to stay really, really, really on during the race. Unlike the marathon where I try to switch my brain off for half the time, this is a race where you really have to be firing on all cylinders.
BEN WATERWORTH: You were talking before about that sort of journey that get you to Athens, and obviously make the team. We always love to hear sort of Olympic experiences from everything, from the moment you're announced, getting your uniform, if you do the opening ceremony, everything's like that. And I guess the thing I'm intrigued more about Athens is that we've only had a couple of athletes who went to 2004, and I don't really know if I've sort of heard kind of what those Olympics were like, because it's obviously a unique Olympics, back to the birthplace of the Olympic Games. I mean, I remember watching, you know, glued to Athens and loving every single moment. As an Australian, we had a very successful Olympics, so we're very fond of Athens. But kind of, you know, take us through that moment, going to the Olympics, everything around outside of competing and experiencing Olympics for the first time.
MALINDI ELMORE: Hold on, you want me to think back 17 years right now?
BEN WATERWORTH: We really like to test people on this show. Come on.
MALINDI ELMORE: Oh my goodness, it's like a different lifetime. Yeah, Athens was really cool. I think the thing that stands out to me about Athens was the fact that it was in Athens. And so we, and because it wasn't during COVID, we could actually leave the village. And so there was a competition, and then there was going out and like seeing the Acropolis and hanging out in the Greek plazas and eating dinner at midnight. And, you know, it's like still 35 degrees out, and you're having these just amazing feasts. And like the epicness of being at the Athens Olympics, like the birthplace of the Olympics, like a lot of history there. And yeah, it was just, both experiences were just so incredibly different. But I also just feel like I had a lot more of an Olympic experience that time, because for this particular games, for the marathons, marathon runners, we weren't even staying in the Olympic Village. We were up in Sapporo in hotels. We weren't with the rest of the Olympic team or the Canadian team or, you know, all that kind of stuff. So it was kind of more like just a road race that happened to have the Olympic banner on it than being at the Olympics.
COLIN HILDING: I know you're probably going to have pretty good memories of the competition in Athens. Obviously, one of the things I find interesting is just how big the stakes are there and what the competition must be like, because you end up pulling off. I mean, I think you said prior you've done about 410 for the Pan Am Games, maybe. I'm guessing it was probably your career best performance in Athens, and yet you basically made as far as the heats. I mean, what was it like? Did you know going in, it's going to be this stiff of a competition?
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, well, no, I ran a lot slower, actually, in the heats at Athens than I'd been running all year. So I ran 409 in the heats, and I had run 402 and 404 and 405 much quicker to qualify. But a couple of things happened. One is that I'd been just chasing races all spring and summer to get to make the team and had been already to Europe twice and all over California. So I think in some ways I was sort of I was sort of peaked already before I even got there. And then unfortunately, a couple of weeks, only two weeks before I got a virus. So I was kind of run down also just sick and run down. So I wasn't kind of at my best best going into it and fell flat in the race. Like I just I was with the pack. I was in a great position. I was talking to my coach about this the other day. Actually, we were kind of reminiscing because he was in support with me as well. That when it came time to kick with about 200 metres to go, I just didn't have the gears to pick it up and to kick. And, you know, it was disappointing when I had really good finishes in the rest of my races that year. But, you know, I walked away and I was definitely very disappointed. But at that time, of course, I had no idea what the future would hold. I really believed that I would be back and I would learn from that experience and be better the next time.
COLIN HILDING: It's interesting you mentioned chasing races, because I think the first time I ever heard that term was during Tokyo. Donovan Bailey was on talking about how the American male track stars were underperforming. And he used that phrase. And I think I listened to his podcast and he said the same thing and say, people need to learn the lesson not to chase races. Is that something that's common? What's the thinking behind, I want to get in as many competitions as possible? And what type of effect does that have in the long run?
MALINDI ELMORE: You know, it's not even so much as getting in as many competitions as possible. For many people, it's qualifying. It's really hard to qualify for the Olympics. Like the times, the standards that are required to make the track and field competition are based on an average of a top eight finish from the past four Olympics or something like that. Don't quote me how people can hear this, but it's statistically created and it's a very difficult global standard to even achieve. And in Canada during that era in particular, we actually imposed even harder standards than the global standards. So you had to qualify through the World Federation. But then if you were to be selected by Athletics Canada, you needed to run even faster because they wanted to think that you were going to win a medal, and that was what they were basing their selection criteria on. So to make the team, you were peaking basically all spring, summer, and you were trying to get into fast races to get the performances. Now, I mean the other scenario where people are chasing races, so maybe just to qualify, and then in the other case, it's many of these athletes' profession, and their contracts rely on them having a certain number of appearances, or they get appearance fees, or that's where the prize money is to go to races, and they don't make money if they don't race. So it's sort of like you can't just sit around and wait for the Olympics and not get, you know, not put yourself in the opportunity to support yourself during the rest of the year.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's crazy to kind of think that and kind of, you know, I always like hearing about, you know, particularly when you've got these opportunities to go to numerous, say, multi-sport events, you know, University of Gange talking about Pan Am's, Commonwealth Games, which I'll ask a question about in a second, because, you know, some athletes we get on the show, they compete in a sport where they don't go to any multi-sport events except for the Olympics, whereas obviously athletics is kind of the standard, you know, sport that you'll have at all of these games. And I mean, is it sort of talking about choosing these races and all those sort of things? Like, you've got to look at a calendar, I can imagine, every single year and go, okay, this takes precedence because it's a more prestigious event. It's got a stronger field. It's going to push me further versus, well, I could go to this event and win a medal, but it's not going to hold the same weight if I get fifth in a final at the World Champs.
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, and that also depends on the event, Terry. So for example, in the marathon, you only do one or two marathons a year, right? So unlike the 100 where you really can do back to back to back weekends. So most marathoners will forgo Pan Ams at this point because they're often in hot places and an ideal time of year or maybe Commonwealth. And in fact, the World Championship versus Olympic marathon is a very different makeup as well, because like Ethiopia and Kenya will have 100 people from their countries that can qualify for the top three and either, you know, for either of those teams, but their top men and women will only pick the Olympics. So the worlds might roll down to like their 12th best runner, who is still better than most other athletes in the whole world because they're just so deep. But generally speaking in athletics, track and world championships and Olympic Games are prestigious and really not to be missed.
BEN WATERWORTH: The one I'd like to quickly ask you about Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in 2006. I mean, running in the MCG, you make the final. Now, the MCG for Australia is a coliseum. It's an icon. This is, you know, our most prestigious venue. And, you know, I've been to many of matches there. I've done tours of it and I mean, never quite even remotely got close to performing at the MCG. But I mean, what's that experience like? Because I mean, that was from memory. You attended pretty well every single day, 80 to 100,000 people every single day. Had you ever sort of run in front of a crowd like that and kind of experienced something on that level?
MALINDI ELMORE: Well, I had in 04 in Athens, there were 80 or 100,000 people as well. And that was actually one of the things that stood with me. The most was how noisy it is in one of those stadiums, for sure. When everybody is yelling in a stadium and it's a bowl and you're on the track and the crowd is following you around as you run around the track, it's like they're doing a wave and they all start yelling while you run by, and it's really deafening and it's really hard to focus, especially when you're used to running under more normal running conditions with 10 to 20,000 people who don't need nearly as much noise. And the lights are on, it's bright, you've got the jumbotron, you've got cameras along the track, like it is very exhilarating. It's really a ton of fun because I think ultimately we want to run fast, but we're also performers and you get a lot of energy from the crowd, and you can hear them. And I do remember the Commonwealth Games so well. It was an amazing, amazing experience. And Sarah Jamison was in the race, an Australian who had a good shot of winning. She didn't end up winning. Yeah, but I know the crowd was so behind her, right? And you can feel that energy, the hometown crowd for someone in the race. So yeah, I really love that full stadium experience, and that was another kind of change this year in Tokyo where we had an empty stadium and we had an Olympic Games.
COLIN HILDING: I know that you continue to compete after Athens. I guess ultimately you didn't make it into the Olympics again in Beijing. Had you decided already at that point that you wanted to step away from the sport, or I guess when did you decide that you wanted to kind of hang it up briefly? Because we're going to get to what happened after that.
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, so briefly, so yeah, I was disappointed but motivated after Athens. I had some really good races in the interim years, but a couple of things happened leading into 08. So one of them was that I broke my navicular bone in my left foot in the summer of 07, just before World Championships. So I was nursing a bad injury for eight months prior. And then as I mentioned earlier, Athletics Canada had these harder standards to qualify for Olympic teams. So I was like globally qualified, but I wasn't selected by Athletics Canada to go to the Beijing Olympics. There were also eight women who, like two weeks before the Olympics, were expelled from the Games because of doping. They didn't have positive doping tests, but they tampered with the doping procedures. So it was like triple whammy. So that was really disappointing. I continued on to 2012, but never really got back to my former fitness. And then knew in 2012 that I was ready to retire, take a step back from the sport, do other things in life. I didn't ever have aspirations that I'd get to this level of sport again, but I actually, in the interim between doing track and retiring in 2012 and picking up running again in 2019, got into doing long course triathlon pretty seriously for a few years as well. So kind of pivoted and found a new sport, and then found my way back to running.
BEN WATERWORTH: Is that something that when you're doing those long course triathlons that you think, well, I could just shorten these down a little bit, maybe triathlon, I could go to the Olympics again in a different sport? Was that something that you realistically thought, or was it just kind of you were doing it to keep competitive, keep fit, you enjoyed it, something different as a challenge?
MALINDI ELMORE: I actually did end up racing professionally in long course triathlon, but it's very different than I2 triathlon, which is in the Olympics. So for triathlete nerds or cycling nerds out there, Olympic level I2 triathlon is draft legal, so your swimming really matters. You have to get out of the water in a pack because you can draft on the bike, and then it comes down to a run. I'm not a good swimmer. That did not come naturally to me, and I didn't grow up swimming, so I couldn't do that kind of draft legal sport. I'd get my butt kicked in the water, and the day would be long over. So I did 70.3 in Ironman races, so like the long distance, and that's non-drafting. So I got my butt kicked in the water, and then had hours to try and pick it up on the bike, and then a run afterwards. So I was able to eventually run my way back into contention if I waited long enough and rode hard enough to make up for my pitiful swims.
COLIN HILDING: And as far as getting into marathons, years after you decided you wanted to get out of athletics, was the motivation just for fun, or was it you want to get back in competitively from the start?
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, it was completely 100% for fun, and I had decided I was going to step away from triathlon because it was too time intensive, and I had two little boys at that point. So when I got into marathoning, my second child was three months old, and I was just running for fun, and I joked that I had had too much coffee that morning and came home from this great run, and my head was spinning. I said to my husband, I think I'm going to just do a marathon as a bucket list idea. And he actually ran the 1500 and the 92 and 96 Olympics for Canada. And he's born in Winnipeg. Speaking Winnipeg, Graham Hood. And so he said, OK, well, I'll write you up a training plan. But I wanted to do Chicago a month later with my friends, and he said, that's ridiculous. You can't do that. But you could do Houston in three months from now. So he wrote me a training plan and basically took me from like barely being able to run to my first marathon in January of 2019. And Oliver was six, seven months old then, my baby. So we brought him with us and I ran 232. It was my debut marathon and it was so much fun. I love the training. I love the racing. It felt really easy. And Graham and I looked at each other after my race and we're like, well, guess we better try for the Olympics now.
COLIN HILDING: Now, here's where you can confirm if Wikipedia is reliable in any way because we'd mentioned Off Air. I was kind of excited because I saw something on here, which is your personal best half marathon time was actually in Winnipeg in 2019. Is that right?
MALINDI ELMORE: It is, yes.
COLIN HILDING: Which one did you run? Because I actually started doing half marathons maybe five years ago. So I try to run all the half marathons that are here in Winnipeg. And if it was one of the major ones, I might have actually been next to you for about five seconds before you pulled away.
MALINDI ELMORE: I did the one that was the marathon, Manitoba Marathon.
COLIN HILDING: Oh, yeah. And it was the half one. I was in that. That was actually the last one that we had because even before COVID, we had like a massive snow storm in October, which cancelled our last one. So I remember that. And that was the half marathon. So I finished, I think, around an hour and 50 minutes. So you definitely beat me. I can at least say I ran with an Olympian.
BEN WATERWORTH: Are you expecting to win?
COLIN HILDING: I mean, 111, that's an incredible time. Had you done half marathons at that point?
MALINDI ELMORE: No, I was just really getting into road racing at that point. So that was, yeah. So Ollie, that was his first birthday, actually. I missed his first birthday to go run that race. So that was just kind of like my comeback. I'd done the marathon, and I figured I should do a half marathon, and that's the last half marathon I've done, because then, of course, COVID came and wiped out everything after that. So yeah, I'm excited to do another marathon, or half marathon, and love to get back to Winnipeg and do that one again.
BEN WATERWORTH: The thing that I'm learning from this, and I always like to just pathway out potential Olympic options for myself, Malindi, now, just working out, you know, I don't want to mention your age on air, but just working out how all that played out. You were a little bit older than I am now when you decided, oh, marathon, let's do it. I've always wanted to do a marathon. So I'm just working this out that I've still got time, that all of a sudden I could do a marathon, run a good time, and then maybe contact your husband, give me a plan, and then contact the Australian Olympic Committee, and Paris maybe not really, but LA. Home Olympics 2032. I mean, look, I'm just saying, you're giving me hope.
MALINDI ELMORE: What's wrong with Paris? It's still three years out.
BEN WATERWORTH: True, I'll only be what, 37? So I guess I'm still, you know, three years from there?
COLIN HILDING: It only took Malindi two years, Ben. Like, come on, you could do it in three, right?
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I mean, you know, my running career probably stems back to year eight athletics where I finished last in the last division of the 100 metres. But I guess I've got some time to work on those skills, do I?
COLIN HILDING: Well, along with what Ben's saying, one of the things I always found interesting with distance running is that you see a big difference in the age groups, whereas in something that's shorter distance, it's probably always going to be the 25s and under who are at the top. But in most of the races that I've run in, it's that 35 to 45 age bracket that seems to always be at the top. I mean, is it just patience over the years that young people just burn themselves out too quickly? What's your experience with that?
MALINDI ELMORE: Well, my joke is that, and there's truth to this joke, it's not really that funny, is that while they may have a lot going for them on the age side, I have 20 more years of running an aerobic training than they do a 20-year-old, right? So that's got to be worth something. So actually in Sapporo, I was ninth. The woman who was tenth is Australian. She's 44. The woman who finished right after her in 11th from Uganda is in her 40s and set a World Masters record of 219 last year. And then in 13th was Natasha Wodak from Canada, and she's going to be 40 this year. So 100%, this is an event that doesn't have that kind of age barrier. And then at the same time, the top people are in their 20s. So it is pretty cool that it's an event that you can be, you can span at least two decades, 2030s, 40s actually, it could be three decades, right?
BEN WATERWORTH: Which is incredible to think that you think of maybe the ultimate athletic ability of any event in Olympic Games, what is the true test of human ability? It's the marathon. And it's great to see that there is such an age spread, because I mean, that's inspirational. All jokes aside about my athletic ability, I mean, as someone who's 34 right now and would love to run a marathon one day, sure on Olympics, but even just the local marathon I finished at last, it's kind of testing yourself, right? And then you've picked it up and then managed to transform it from a cool, I'll just do this to look, I'm back at the Olympics. So it's kind of, it's a very unique thing to think about when it comes to such a test of human ability. And that the age really isn't much of a barrier in the sport.
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah. And you know what I love about the marathon is that it has such wide appeal. It doesn't have to just be an elite sport. There's 40, 50,000 people will sign up for these major marathons, and they'll train and they're doing, going through the same process that I am. They're getting up early and they're doing their run and they're tired and they're dragging themselves out of bed and they're looking forward to it. And I coach people who do the marathon and they keep coming back for more and more. But it's something, again, like you could be really fast and elite at one end, and you could just be someone who your goal is just to complete it, whatever it takes, and that's also super inspiring. So it's a super, I think, a really great event that way. And I think it's something that people can understand more so than a lot of events that they've never done or never been able to be part of or don't understand. It's pretty simple. How fast can you cover 42.2 kilometres?
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, I always find it interesting watching the TV coverage for the athletes that the media obviously can predict and the ones they can't. And in Tokyo, of course, there is going to be a lot of talk about Andre de Grasse or Penny Oleksiak. I don't think I heard your name come up until it was within the last couple of kilometres of that marathon, maybe a little bit before that. And I think that was one of the great stories coming out of Tokyo, is that you did come in either as an underdog or somebody just under the radar. And maybe that was a matter of the fact that you only got into this two years prior to that, or the layoff that you had. It just was a big story. But did you find going into this that you had that expectation I could potentially do a top 10 finish? And then as far as how the media accepted you afterwards, was this a big deal? A lot of people all of a sudden took an interest because of the layoff you had or the short term that you were able to get into an Olympic position?
MALINDI ELMORE: Two questions there. Let me keep these straight. First of all, my expectations were absolutely to finish in the top 10. So that's what I was training for. I was training for all spring. I dreamed big, and I dreamed bigger than top 10. I leave anything out there as a possibility and don't want to limit myself. So someone like Molly Siddell, who from the US finished third, had an amazing performance and was overjoyed. Her personal best coming in was slower than mine, and I was ranked 20th coming in, and she was ranked about 23rd. So amazing things can happen in the Olympics when everything goes right. And she had a dream day, and I dreamed of that dream day as well. And I was very pleased with my top 10 performance, but that was what I expected. And then in terms of reaction, I actually found that there was a fair amount of interest in my story leading into the Games from what I, because I'm on the receiving end of requests and that sort of thing, that a lot of people thought, you know, coming to the Olympics at 41 with two kids 17 years later was kind of a cool thing. And so, you know, that was cool to me that people were interested in hearing that. I took a break after I got back and just went camping with my family and just kind of reconnected. So I actually haven't done a whole lot since then, and I also work. So I've been kind of busy, so you guys are like kind of the first people that I've really chatted to about this since I got back.
BEN WATERWORTH: So we can sell this as an exclusive. This will be our first ever exclusive on Off The Podium. Can we use that word?
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, and I'll send you the invoice later.
BEN WATERWORTH: No, we expect it. Absolutely. You know, that's completely expected, which I mean, I just, I love sort of the story with everything around it, but particularly just again that we have a bit of a run, a bit of fun. Oh yeah, you could go to the Olympics. Like, I mean, when you cross that line and you achieve that top 10, I mean, you're back at the Olympics after all these years in a different event. Like, is there relief? I mean, you just run a marathon. You're like, I need to rest. Like, I mean, was there sort of just an emotional moment that you had when you finished and to realise the achievement that you had actually done?
MALINDI ELMORE: Well, if you watched my race, which people remind me of, because I haven't even watched it yet, because it's two and a half hours long. Who has that kind of time? I crossed the finish line, and I sat down right away, and my dad's like, you were okay. I was so worried. You sat down and didn't move. But I was honestly so exhausted when I finished. Like, the last 7K was just such a grind to get to the finish line, and it took all my powers physically and emotionally and mentally to get to the line and to not give up as little time and no positions. You know, no one passed me, and that was my goal. But I really worked hard that last 7K. So I was just, to be honest, I was just so tired and so happy to be done running that the success of the result didn't really hit me right away or maybe never really did because I was just so tired. I just wanted to sit down and then it was like, okay, now I want to go eat and like all the things in the moment. And then I'm really like only now really starting to get a chance to reflect on it. Again, it was more like so cool to make the team. Like that was such a big deal for me and for my family when I was selected to the team in June. That was such a relief, especially with COVID because it had delayed everything a full year, right? So it was kind of a bit of an anxious year, like not get injured, not have COVID, cancel these games. Will I get selected? Because there were five of us who had qualified for the team and only three could go. So that was just so exhilarating actually getting named to the team and going. And then it was like, okay, now I've got a job to do and my job is to be top 10. And I kind of knew going in that that's what I expected of myself.
BEN WATERWORTH: One thing I'd just like to quickly touch on, you mentioned before about sort of the differences, and I guess the mental side of things, say 1500 and say a marathon. You sort of mentioned about maybe switching off a little bit in that marathon kind of mentally, because you know, it's sort of a long race. I mean, how mentally you mentioned those last 7Ks when you're feeling done, like, oh, I've got to push through this. I don't want to sort of get overtaken. Like, what do you do? How do you kind of push yourself to finish that race and kind of go through those final moments of a marathon?
MALINDI ELMORE: Well, you know, everybody is hurting in the last part of a marathon. That's just part of the sport and part of the event. So I just would kind of think to myself, well, everyone is hurting. And as long as you keep me moving forward, it's going to be really hard for anyone to catch you. So you have to keep moving forward. But there was a time that just all of a sudden I was just hit with fatigue and nausea and I thought, I just got to stop. And but I didn't let myself I was like, no, you just got to keep going one step in front of the other. And then the kind of an amazing thing happened. And I don't know if it's just all the years of training again and kind of working on on skills. But I had written down some words before that I wanted to think of when I knew that things got tough. And I didn't actively think, oh, I'm going to think of those keywords. But they just I had practised them, I guess enough that they just started coming coming into my consciousness. And it gave me something else to focus on. And it it just kept me kind of moving forward even and it kind of overrided like the desire to want to stop, which really is if you read about physiology, like your brain is going to tell you to stop well before it actually really needs to for health and safety reasons. It's kind of like like a protective mechanism that yeah, you're you're hot, you're tired, you're fatigued. You want you're you're you want to stop, but you don't actually need to. So it's just kind of learning to ignore those signals.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's kind of like people listening to this show. Often they get five minutes in and go, this is crap. Stop listening to it. But actually secretly saying, give it a chance. It gets better.
COLIN HILDING: So once they get past mine and Ben's intro, we get to the interview. That's when they realise, hey, it's worth it.
BEN WATERWORTH: I suck. I thought I was listening to someone good and then oh, there she is.
COLIN HILDING: We asked Evan Dunphy about this. You know, he was racing probably a few days removed from you, same area, Sapporo, the heat in Tokyo. I mean, we just heard over and over again how brutal it was. And to me, it's always amazing that they even bother to have things like marathons or the Olympics because nobody really runs races that are that long during like the hottest months of the summer, let alone the heat you're experiencing in Tokyo. He told us about how much he had to prepare, that almost all his prep was just about how do I run a race in this heat? Did you have that type of preparation? Did you know how hot it was going to be, and had you ever had to run like that before?
MALINDI ELMORE: Yes, so Evan and I were together for 15 days prior to our races. Well, 14, he was a day before me. And so we were doing a lot of similar strategies, and we also have an amazing team with Athletics Canada and our sports science and our physiologists, kind of led by Trent Stellingworth out of Victoria, and then Gareth Stanford from UBC was with us on site. And our coaches, our whole staff, worked so closely with us in our final prep to really refine our fuelling, heating, our fuelling, cooling, piecing strategies. And we practised what we were going to do, and we meticulously planned it out. And Evan, of course, is extremely meticulous. He knows down to the gram and the millilitre of fluids and the carbohydrates that he needs to have the level of performance he wants. But yeah, we had planned it out well in advance, and even in the months leading in. I lived in Kelowna. It was 46 degrees for a week in June, and that's abnormally hot. But we get heat. So I practised running in the heat, and I practised how... You know, the humidity was a bit of a difference in Japan than the dry heat in BC, but I practised how I feel in heat and what that does to my pace. And it meant in the race that I really had to be conservative and really hold my pace, hold myself accountable to a certain pace throughout the race and not kind of like throw caution into the wind and just go for it because I knew it would come back to haunt me. So yeah, the preparation was really key for both of us.
BEN WATERWORTH: We've spoken to a few athletes on the show about the experiences of the ceremonies in Tokyo and sort of the uniqueness of it. Now, you mentioned the closing ceremony. Two-part question on this. Firstly, I believe it was a bit of a unique story how you were even able to go to the closing ceremony because I believe it wasn't necessarily the plan. And secondly, tell us about the reaction that other athletes had to the Canadian tuxedo because our Australian commentators loved it. And I was living in Canada when they released all the merchandise at the bay, and I nearly bought one. I think they look epic, the jackets. But were you getting athletes coming up to you? Like, dude, these are epic. Give me one, I'll swap you this. I want one.
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, so I wasn't meant to go to the closing ceremony, as you mentioned, but we had to get from Sapporo back to Canada, and we couldn't do it all in one go because there was an airport transfer in Tokyo. And that happened to coincide with the night that was closing ceremony. So that was the day after my race. So we transferred the marathon women to the Olympic Village and to closing ceremony. Evan was there because he had his medal ceremony in the stadium the day previous. I was so beat up because I had just run a marathon the day before. I couldn't walk. It was just so much pain. So that was actually kind of a painful experience going to closing ceremony because they drop you off like three miles before the stadium because all the buses bring these athletes, and you have to walk in so far. And we were wearing the Canadian tuxedos, and it's like 40 degrees and 100% humidity, and we're wearing thick denim jeans, thick denim jacket, mask, hat, a black t-shirt. Like we were just dying. And you can't bring anything with you, like a backpack, so you just want to jump into a swimming pool and cool off. I was glad to go to the ceremony because you get FOMO, you don't want to miss anything, but walking that far in the most close the day after a marathon.
BEN WATERWORTH: I was thinking now that you say that, like with the buses, you think they would think, okay, the marathon athletes can go up the front so they don't have to work the three months. And then secondly, now that you talk about this, it looks great, but yeah, logistically maybe not the smartest decision for the closing attire at a hot Olympics. Maybe for the winters in Beijing.
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, so I was kind of envious of the Australian closing ceremony outfit because they were just like dresses for the women, lightweight dresses and shorts and a t-shirt for men. That's what we needed to wear.
BEN WATERWORTH: Okay, this is where the different cultures come into play. We're all on board the summers. We're like, yeah, we know it's going to be hot, cool. But come the winters, we're the ones in the corner freezing our arses off. Whereas you guys in the winters are like, oh, we've got the jackets, the puffy ones.
COLIN HILDING: That's when we break up the t-shirts.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, exactly. You're the ones wearing those in the winters. Spotting Australia at the Winter Olympics. It's not that hard.
COLIN HILDING: Now, just in closing here, we did mention we have a series of questions, which I don't think they were doing this in Athens. They sadly didn't do it for Tokyo. So we get to give you an induction here into something that Team Canada has done for a couple of Olympics now, which is they give a questionnaire to all the athletes. They get to fill it out in their own handwriting. Some of it involves drawing pictures. Some of it involves sports-related questions. Some of it's just fun questions. But just quick-fire answers. You can kind of give us your take on this. Ben, you've got yours ready, right? Always.
BEN WATERWORTH: Colin, I'm always ready for this. Yes, absolutely.
COLIN HILDING: Okay, so starting it off with, your favourite sports movie is?
MALINDI ELMORE: Steel Dreams.
BEN WATERWORTH: I don't think we've heard that yet. No, I don't think so either. Your favourite ever Olympic moment is...
MALINDI ELMORE: God, that's so hard, there's so many good ones. Oh, I'm just going to go with Lea Pels in her fourth place finish in Atlanta, because that started my career.
COLIN HILDING: I didn't even get to follow up, but I mean, you said you competed alongside her later on. I mean, what was that like? Somebody that you probably thought, oh, I'll never get to meet this person, let alone compete with them.
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, no, she's been awesome. She kind of was a mentor to me when I was in high school, and we were like pen pals back before like email. And she would run with me, come up here. I did a few workouts with her, and she's still involved with some of the athletes on the team as a sports psych. So I think she's got a great legacy.
COLIN HILDING: This next one is a little bit of a tricky question, but when I was little, I always thought. That would be a cheese. There you go. We got an answer. That's always one of the tricky questions.
BEN WATERWORTH: I always like it when people literally answer that with, I'm hungry. Like that was just a little bit more. So if you could choose any Olympic host city, where would it be?
MALINDI ELMORE: Vancouver again.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yes. Yes. Well, I mean, it's on the cards. I was going to say, you're going to say Colona?
MALINDI ELMORE: I'm going to change my answer, Melbourne, because they did a great job with Conlaus, and I love that city.
BEN WATERWORTH: The thing that, I mean, look, to me, it is my favourite city in Australia, even more so from where I'm from. I absolutely love Melbourne, but Melbourne's kind of always that city I love, that I remember in the lead up to Rio, when there was kind of like, oh, is Rio going to happen? Like, they might have like, Melbourne's the, oh, they're ready to go. Like, Melbourne could host the Olympics tomorrow, basically. So it's, I mean, they label it the sporting capital of the world. So it's ready. You know what I'm saying?
MALINDI ELMORE: And the flat whites, they're spectacular.
BEN WATERWORTH: Because they're proper flat whites, Malindi. This is the thing. It's an Australian invention, and everyone else around the world butchers the flat white, and you come to Australia, you get a proper flat white.
MALINDI ELMORE: They make them at Starbucks now, and I'd only ever had them in Australia, and then I ordered one here, and I was like, what is this?
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, let's clear this up right now for people outside of Australia. A flat white is called a flat white because it has no foam. It's flat, right? A latte has a bit of foam, and then a cappuccino has a lot of foam. So there's your distinctions between the coffee. So outside of Australia, flat white, no foam, get it right.
COLIN HILDING: Next one, in my spare time, I most like to hang out with my kids.
BEN WATERWORTH: Great answer.
COLIN HILDING: Proper answer.
BEN WATERWORTH: Colin, you should probably answer that one. Stop podcasting and hang out with your children. Come on. The weirdest instruction a coach ever gave you was?
MALINDI ELMORE: Sometimes doing your best is not enough. Sometimes you need to do what is required.
COLIN HILDING: Oh, that's good.
BEN WATERWORTH: That's deep.
COLIN HILDING: How about your favourite workout is?
MALINDI ELMORE: Six, seven kilometres, six, sorry, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one kilometres at marathon pace.
COLIN HILDING: So is that like done in intervals? You do seven, you take a rest, then you do six?
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, you get 90 seconds between them. So you do a warm up and a cool down, so it's about 37 kilometres total for the day, and you do intervals at your marathon goal pace.
COLIN HILDING: I was thinking for a second, I'm like, you know, that actually sounds like fun until you said 90 seconds, 90 minutes maybe.
MALINDI ELMORE: And it depends what your pace is. For me, going into the Olympics, it was about 324 per kilometre, so that gets pretty hard.
BEN WATERWORTH: I just like Colin's always hidden agendas. He's writing down notes for his own training. These are my tips, yeah.
MALINDI ELMORE: You can email me later, I'll hook you up. I know some of them.
BEN WATERWORTH: There you go, Colin. If you could have lunch with any one person, who would it be?
MALINDI ELMORE: I would say Barack Obama.
BEN WATERWORTH: Good answer. Can we come to that lunch too, just give a sneaky invite?
COLIN HILDING: Also, just going back to a previous one, did you ever get the chance to meet Clara Hughes?
MALINDI ELMORE: I've met Clara, and she's amazing. So when I went to the Pan Am Games, speaking of that, in 03, I walked into our apartment, the Canadian team, I was put in with other athletes, and there was a bike against the wall in the living room. And I just kind of freaked out and was like, oh my god, is Clara Hughes staying in my apartment? And I didn't run into her for two days because we were off schedule, and then I was like a total fangirl when I finally got to meet her and was a little starstruck. And then we both were in Calgary at the same time training, and I would run around the oval at UFC, around the speed skating oval. There was like a two-lane track. So I do my intervals there while she was training, and she was always like so gracious and would say hi, and I just thought that was just so cool too.
COLIN HILDING: I'm going to go there and I'm going to do that. Now I know how to make clear.
MALINDI ELMORE: I don't think I'll find her there anymore though, because she doesn't do that sport anymore. You got to find her on some remote trail hiking somewhere in another country.
BEN WATERWORTH: You go, Colin. I think it's your turn. The professionalism on this show is shining through.
COLIN HILDING: That's right. My favourite sandwich is?
MALINDI ELMORE: Oh, something with avocado and pesto and chicken breast and tomato and lettuce. And really good bread.
BEN WATERWORTH: I was going to say, bread is always important. Are you a specific type of bread that you always go towards?
MALINDI ELMORE: No, it just has to be good, like artisan bread, like a nice sourdough or a nice really good soft, nothing too hard because you don't want to steal away from the contents inside. It can't be too thick, but it has to complement things nicely.
BEN WATERWORTH: I like it. I like it. If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
MALINDI ELMORE: Any superpower? Well, I think it would just be to be indefinitely patient and calm, and I'm saying that from a parenting perspective.
BEN WATERWORTH: And Colin.
COLIN HILDING: I can't believe. The best candy in the world is, I keep getting the, I'm this close to dinner, why do I keep getting all the food questions? Best candy in the world?
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I am excited for the day somebody answers white chocolate, but I love the dark chocolate. Like just, you know, white chocolate, sneaky favourite. I love this question. Also too, as a hockey fan, I can guess maybe if you're a hockey fan where you would go with this one, but we'll see. As a kid, your favourite sports team was?
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, well, I guess it had to be the Vancouver Canucks.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, it had to be.
MALINDI ELMORE: But it wasn't really by choice. It was just the...
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, no one chooses the Canucks. You're there.
COLIN HILDING: Why not?
BEN WATERWORTH: I mean, I lived in Victoria, and I'm a Calgary fan, so it kind of it just, you know, that was fun. But I swear I met more Edmonton fans in Victoria than I met Canucks fans, so it was a weird place. But hey.
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, I don't know the people from Victoria or from Vancouver usually.
COLIN HILDING: Maybe that's it.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah. They just they just look over and go, no, I don't want to go for them, right? Go for Edmonton instead. They're going to go jump on the Seattle train this season, let's be honest. Like, hey, the city is basically the same distance, so we don't want to go for the Canucks. Let's get on the Kraken.
COLIN HILDING: I just realised that we answered a couple of these questions. So I was thinking you literally were. My brothers all over the place. So here we go. Here's the final question. If you could live anywhere in the world, it would be?
MALINDI ELMORE: Oh, that is just so hard because I live in Kelowna, BC, and that's where my home and my heart is. So I think I'm always going to be like, this is going to be my home home. But if I could like temporarily live other places, I would. But I will always come back to here. So I would live in Melbourne. I would live in Melbourne would be great. Honestly, I do love Melbourne. My husband and I go through this conversation often, like where else should we consider living? And then we just keep coming back to here because I'm looking outside and it's sunny and the sky is blue and it's like perfect running temperature. And then we're looking forward to ski season. We've got an amazing ski mountain an hour away. The summers are hot. There's great wine here. There's boating. There's lakes.
BEN WATERWORTH: My first memory, back to the naive Australian and coming to Canada and not realising the extent of, say, the wildlife, I was there for a wedding and it was at a golf course. And going into the building, the first sign that I see is this massive sign, Caution! Bears on course. And part of me was like, Wow, cool, bears. And then I'm like, Actually doesn't sound cool. Don't know how I feel about here. So that was my first experience of Kelowna when I went there.
COLIN HILDING: I totally thought Ben was going to tell the story about the first time I had to put on ski pants, but that's maybe for a different episode.
BEN WATERWORTH: Don't bring up my skiing. It's embarrassing enough. All right. We've got a Summer Olympian today, Colin. Save that for the winters.
MALINDI ELMORE: I love skiing here.
BEN WATERWORTH: Look, yeah, I tried for two seconds, wimped out. There's a short story. If people want to follow your journey, so to stay up to date with what you're doing and kind of keep up to date with everything as well. Social media website, where can people sort of stay up to date with what you're up to?
MALINDI ELMORE: Oh, yeah, I'm in the current world now. So I have a website and it's my name, malindielmore.com. And I started a YouTube channel and I do little running videos, like just little like eight, ten minute tips on running. So that's cool if people want to subscribe to that. And then, yeah, Instagram, Twitter, it's all my name. And my name is not like, I don't have to worry about other people having my name, so it's great.
BEN WATERWORTH: There's only one, the, Malindi Elmore. You can just shorten it in kind of Madonna style, keep it Malindi and just Malindi.
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, I actually, I've met other, not really met other Malindi's, but occasionally someone will reach out to me with the same name and we'll connect.
COLIN HILDING: This is the one here, Win or Learn with Malindi Elmore?
MALINDI ELMORE: Yeah, got it. Yes.
COLIN HILDING: There we go. I'm already subscribed.
BEN WATERWORTH: Look at him, he's just using this to just boom.
COLIN HILDING: I need to improve my results. I mean, I'm at 150. I got to get to that 111 area for the half marathon.
BEN WATERWORTH: You're under two hours. I don't think I'm under 10 hours for a half marathon. Talk about improving your time by eight minutes. Eight hours is where I'm going to go.
MALINDI ELMORE: Here's the secret. Run twice a day every day. Don't get hurt.
BEN WATERWORTH: You'll run twice a day. Okay, that easy. I'll see you in Paris 2024.
COLIN HILDING: It was great to have you here, Malindi. We actually are legitimately excited to see you possibly in Paris. I'm sure that's the goal already. I'm hoping crossing my fingers.
MALINDI ELMORE: Paris is 100% the goal. I didn't mention that Paris is also one of my very favourite cities. I did a semester abroad there. And I'm super excited because my kids will be able to come. We're really hoping that COVID is behind us by then. But it was kind of a bummer that they couldn't come to this Olympics because that was one of my motivators to go to the Games. They were a big part of the journey, so I'd love to be able to have them on the sidelines in a couple years from now.
COLIN HILDING: Also, if in between now and Paris, if you're looking for a little bit of training, Manitoba Marathon every single year, feel free to wait for me at the finish line.
MALINDI ELMORE: I will definitely connect with you if I end up doing that race again.
COLIN HILDING: And huge thanks to Malindi. I seriously did, you saw that, I subscribed immediately, because I always get excited when we have any type of track stars in here, because it is the only sport that I semi-compete in. You know, not necessarily competitive to an Olympic level, but I love to get pointers and stuff like that, and you know, hearing that her husband, her, both coached before, I'm like, we can learn a lot from Malindi. Let's make sure to have her back on here the next time that we want to run a race.
BEN WATERWORTH: There's a t-shirt, we can learn a lot from Malindi. There you go, you have to put that on a t-shirt.
COLIN HILDING: Malindi, if you're listening, please give us a cut of that.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, I mean, well, she's not, because we told people to stop listening after the interviews. No one's listening at this point except for us. But I mean, it's interesting when we do have guests on the show from a sport that we're familiar with in some level that would say we've competed in. And obviously, we're not competing in the Olympics. But, you know, like you obviously do a bit of running, you know, when we talk to people from field hockey, I grew up playing that. You know, we had Simon Leon recently. I played a bit of badminton, you know, kind of these sort of things where you can kind of relate but not relate, you know. It's kind of like we can say we're podcast hosts. We're the same as Joe Rogan. Well, you know, one of us has listeners and the other is a massive douche. Hello, Joe. But I think you're talking about me and you.
COLIN HILDING: I'm like, which one am I?
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, you know, open to interpretation. But yeah, I mean, it's fascinating. And one thing I'll say that I always enjoy having you on, Colin, for these interviews is that I don't have to do as much work and be particularly when it's a Canadian that I'm learning along the same way. Because obviously, I do my research, as he says, not having done it beforehand. He said it before the interview. But it's a case of learning and kind of going along the way as well with that. So, yeah, but just kind of say two things. Pay attention to your children and stop trying to make friends with our guests. They don't want to hang out with you on Winnipeg. No one wants to hang out with you on Winnipeg. It's Winnipeg. All right. No one wants to hang out with you there.
COLIN HILDING: It's not me personally. It's just the city. That's the problem. I love that question of what we, of course, ended on. You know, what would be a dream place to live? I wanted to say, I'm like, I have yet to hear Winnipeg answered. I wonder why.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, it's the first time I've heard Kelowna rants. I mean, I know just a bit of Kelowna for the nice city when I went there. But I don't know if that would be the top of my list of places living in Canada. But I guess, hey, I'm not a Canadian. So people might choose Hobart. And I'm like, why?
COLIN HILDING: Why?
BEN WATERWORTH: Why would you choose Hobart? So, you know, I feel like we're just closing this out by dissing Malindi's choices. No, that's not what we're doing.
COLIN HILDING: Forget about why Winnipeg, why Hobart, why Off The Podium? Malindi's got a YouTube channel.
BEN WATERWORTH: We didn't even make the podium for the top pop Olympic podcast in the world. We were Off The Podium.
COLIN HILDING: No, we came in. We came in Malindi's Pan Am Games position. We came in fourth place. 18 years from now, we're going to be a top three podcast. We're number four right now.
BEN WATERWORTH: Can I just quickly ask, do you think that Feedspot did that to be a dick to us? They made us number four because they're called Off The Podium. So this makes sense. Yeah.
COLIN HILDING: Well, you know what? I think it's just appropriate. We really were number one. They just decided it's more fitting to be a number four.
BEN WATERWORTH: Hashtag really number one. In four years' time, when number three gets tested for drug cheating, we will get our bronze. We'll finally go up the metal tally. So yes, come on, test those microphones for extra wattage.
COLIN HILDING: We're going to have plenty more to come as we get very close to Beijing. We're counting down the hours now, I'm going to say. It might be hundreds or thousands of hours, but we're counting down the hours. We're getting closer. Countdown has started. Summer, winter, we don't discriminate. Paralympics, we'll throw a little bit of everything in there. So keep listening and go back and listen to a lot of our last interview. At this point, we're at multiple episodes per week because we don't know what else to do with it. We don't want to hold off on these for a year. Go back, you're going to find something interesting. If you listen to this one, another good one, let's just throw a plug at the right now. We talked about Evan Dunphy in here. Go back and listen to Evan Dunphy interview. We talked to Abdi several months ago. That was episode number 101. Go more marathon interviews. So we're going to keep bringing new sports. And do you have the count? You say you've been working on one?
BEN WATERWORTH: Of different sports, Colin?
COLIN HILDING: Which ones? Well, how many we have covered versus how many are left?
BEN WATERWORTH: Look, it maybe hasn't been updated since yesterday when I did a few. But in terms of summer, I think we're roughly up to about 23 or so. And for winter, I mean, at least at the time of recording this, there's only two sports that we have never had anybody on from. And I think I tested you on that. Do you want to be, do you want to trivia this? Do you remember those two sports that we have not had people on from?
COLIN HILDING: I don't remember. I don't remember to spend time with my children, as you just found out.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, ski jumping. We've not had anyone from ski jumping. We've not had anyone from long track. Now, obviously, I could combine short and long track because it's the same sport, but different, but I keep long track separate from short track. So we haven't had a long track speed skater.
COLIN HILDING: Have we technically had 50% of?
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I was thinking that. But I mean, then if you look at Chloe, do we have to then all of a sudden take, well, we had one fifth of an equestrian rider on the show. So, you know, that doesn't count. So, yeah, but I look, we're collectors on this show. We want to take off the bucket list. So not only will we take those off, we eventually will get a break dancing athlete on before. Seriously, we will be. We will be like we got sports climbers on before before Tokyo. So our goal is to talk to somebody and explain to us why break dancing is an Olympic sport. So, yes.
COLIN HILDING: So if you're out there and you're a breakdancing fan, hook us up with somebody. Give us your recommendations.
BEN WATERWORTH: And when cheerleading gets officially confirmed as a sport in LA this podcast officially becomes off the cheerleading podium. And that's all we're going to focus on.
COLIN HILDING: That's what Ben's been waiting for. Yeah. Make sure to like us on Facebook, call us on Twitter, Instagram. We got a YouTube channel. It's not nearly as impressive as the YouTube channel.
BEN WATERWORTH: It hasn't been updated since 2016.
COLIN HILDING: We've been talking about it with I think this entire year. We've even said on episodes, you know what? We're going to have a YouTube channel soon.
BEN WATERWORTH: We will.
COLIN HILDING: But not yet.
BEN WATERWORTH: Both our listeners are excited. They're on YouTube. What's this? Episode 2 from 2016, previewing the Rio Olympics. Oh, a bit slow on the uploads there on Off The Podium.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah. They're all there. They're just slowly uploading.
BEN WATERWORTH: I've got a very slow internet. It's very slow.
COLIN HILDING: Let's make it more realistic. We'll have them buy Brisbane.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, possibly. Did you just call it Brisbane? Learn how to pronounce it. Brisbane. Brisbane.
COLIN HILDING: I went out of my way to pronounce it on the last one as Brisbane, and then I totally slipped up today.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's so North American. It's in Melbourne. Yeah, Melbourne. Winopeg, is that what we can call it?
COLIN HILDING: Just subscribe to our show. We will have some good stuff. You don't have to listen to us the whole time.
BEN WATERWORTH: Jesus, people have tuned out long.
COLIN HILDING: I feel like I'm Noah hosting right now. How do I end this thing?
BEN WATERWORTH: How many drinks have you had tonight, Colin?
COLIN HILDING: Thank you for joining us and go left.
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