Natalia Malaga: Discipline & Enthusiasm!
Colin Powell, the previous Secretary of Condition of The us, after mentioned: “There are no secrets to achievement. Accomplishment is the outcome of perfection, hard operate, finding out from failure, loyalty to those for whom you work and persistence”. Undoubtedly Mr. Powell could properly have been speaking about Natalia Málaga, the final survivor of the golden era of Peruvian female volleyball players who received several trophies more than the previous half-century, putting Latin America’s feminine activity on the Olympic map, along with Nicaraguan-born Costa Rican Claudia Poll (swimming), Gabriela “Gaby” Sabatini from Argentina (tennis), and the women’s basketball facet of Brazil, of program.
A-Born Athlete!
Virtually everyone in Peru has read her title in recent a long time. In Peruvian circles, she is one of the two most popular and revered folks, alongside Gastón Acurio, who is usually referred to as 1 of the gurus in Entire world Gastronomic.
She was born Natalia Maria Málaga Dibos on January 26,1964 into a sporting loved ones in Lima (Peru), the third biggest nation on the South American mainland. In this context, she showed assure as an athlete at a very youthful age, successful considerably encouragement from her academics, friends, and crew-mates. Like several other women in her hometown, she dreamed of one day playing for Peru’s women’s volleyball squad.
She was small, but overcame this with her voracious appetite for wins. Above people a long time, she participated in a great number of volleyball meets, a sport that a lot more than any other embodies Peru’s multi-racial society. Quickly afterward, Málaga’ volleyball positions and self-control received the consideration of many coaches, amid them Norma Velarde and Luisa Fuentes (both who fired the countrywide fascination in volleyball in the seventies when they claimed several prime honors).
Not lengthy later on, she was promoted to Peru’s beneath-seventeen nationwide volleyball group. During this period of time of time, she began to get her first intercontinental meets. As early 1980 as, for illustration, she lifted the two the Continental Cup for Ladies Beneath-seventeen and the Under-19 South American Match. That exact same yr, she received favorable notices and was widely mentioned as a possible Olympic sportwoman to go to what is now Russia to compete in the Video games of the 23rd Olympiad. However she passed unnoticed in the former Soviet Union when the junior squad competed against senior teams from Iron Curtain nations around the world these kinds of as the Democratic German Republic (GDR) and the USSR. At Moscow, for illustration, the host nation defeat Peru 3-one. But that was a enormous experience in a time when the Latin American republic experienced not funds to make pre-Olympic tours -as opposed to Cuba, Usa, Brazil, and Japan– on Much East and Eastern Europe. Practically all of Peru’s costs were compensated by the Kremlin at the 1980 Moscow Video games.
Many thanks to this experience, practically two a long time later, an eighteen-12 months-aged rookie, Málaga designed a sensation at the Junior South American (SA) Championship when Peru claimed gold at the expenditure of Brazil. Throughout those years, Peru made what has been referred to as the “wonder of Latin The usa”. As no other country in the Third World, there had been a lot of globe-course volleyball players in spite of numerous hurdles: Denisse Fajardo, Gina Torrealba, Cecilia del Risco, Cenaida Uribe, and Aurora Heredia, between other folks intercontinental stars.
However in time, by mid-1984 precisely, the nation’s head coach Male Bok Park had his eyes on Málaga to replace Carmen Pimentel. Thereafter, she became a celeb in her property country, together with her other crew-mates, as the national aspect arrived shut to winning the Olympic glory in late 1988.
In spite of being a single of the shortest members of the Peruvian volleyball squad, she was one of the greatest gamers in the background of game in an period when her place experienced been devastated by 1 of Latin America’s worst conflicts (for the duration of those troubled instances, the Peruvian squad was an exception in Globe sporting activities). Her Olympic management was (and as mentor presently) very equivalent to the former goalkeeper José Luis Chilavert of Paraguay, who was typically referred to as one particular of the world’s best footballers in the past fifty percent-century. Following a 23-year sporting occupation, Málaga formally retired from the sport in 2003. Following Peru’s declining volleyball image, she turned to coach. She wants to place the Latin American republic again into the global race.