At age 32, Malindi Elmore decided to retire from professional running.
The former Stanford cross country and track and field student-athlete had put together an extremely successful and rewarding career highlighted by six All-America honors, two school records and an Olympic appearance for her native Canada.
Competing at the Olympics had always been the north star for Elmore, whose first memory of running was watching the women's debut Olympic Marathon at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. She was just 4, but the event sparked her interest in the sport. She soon found herself racing her sister around the house to bed each night.
It wasn't until Elmore was 16 and competing in high school that her Olympic dream became solidified. Elmore was once again motivated by watching on television as the world's top athletes competed at the Olympics. During the 1996 Atlanta Games, she saw her Canadian hero, Leah Marlee Pells, take 4th place in the 1500-meter race. That lit a fire in Elmore, who decided in that moment what she wanted her future to look like.
"That was when I thought, 'Oh, I have to go to the Olympics one day,'" she said. "'That's my ultimate dream goal for my life.'"
When it came time to make a college decision, Elmore kept this goal in mind. Originally planning to stay in Canada, she decided to explore her options in the United States and eventually landed at Stanford.
"I started looking for opportunities in the NCAA because it's the training grounds for the Olympics," she said. "There are just so many good opportunities. When I came across Stanford, the combination of the athletic and academic opportunities … I went on my visit and just really fell in love with the campus and the team and the program."
For the next five years, Elmore benefited from being part of one of the top running programs in the country.
"One unique opportunity was being able to join a training group that was really strong and full of motivated and talented athletes," she said. "There were just so many competitive opportunities that we were afforded. It would be hard to come by that level of competitiveness here (in Canada) on my own."
Malindi Elmore was a Stanford cross country and track and field student-athlete. (Photo by David Gonzales)
Despite facing several injuries throughout her college career, Elmore remained motivated and successful. Navigating four stress fractures and missing several seasons of competition proved to be challenging but never deterred Elmore from her ultimate goal. Upon graduation in 2003, she had only one plan in mind: make the 2004 Olympic team.
"When I graduated, it was a pre-Olympic year, and I thought, 'Well, next year is the year. Might as well go chase this dream and make it happen,'" she said.
On July 1, 2004, she completed the chase. Winning the 1500-meter race during the Canadian Track and Field Championships, Elmore was selected to the Olympic team to represent her country in the very same event that sparked her dream as a 16-year-old.
"It was a dream come true to make the Olympic team in 2004 and go to Athens," Elmore said. "Being there in the birthplace of the Olympics was so special."
While the experience was memorable for Elmore, she fell short in competition and did not advance to the 1500-meter final. Rather than allowing the disappointment to defeat her, Elmore became motivated to train harder and return stronger four years later.
Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned.
"I missed making the team by 0.07 seconds in 2008 and then missed making the 2012 Games by less than a second as well," Elmore said. "I decided at that point to retire and move on with my life. I was really grateful for the opportunities I'd had, but I felt like I had given my best and not achieved what I wanted to. It was time to take a step back and focus on other things."
Over the course of the next seven years, Elmore did just that. She began a career as a teacher and coach and focused on her family, giving birth to her first son, Charlie, in 2014. Shortly after, she picked up the sport of triathlon and eventually competed in 20 long-course triathlon races, recording several podium finishes.
After giving birth to her second son, Oliver, Elmore's passion for running returned.
"I sort of organically found running again," she said. "I love to run and love to train and love to compete."
At age 38, just seven months after giving birth to Oliver, Elmore ran her first marathon in January 2019. With very little training, she ran within 2 minutes of the Olympic qualifying standard.
"I was just like, 'Oh, wow. I could make the Olympics again,'" she said. "'I mean … I might as well try.'"
After facing setbacks and heartbreak during the 2008 and 2012 Olympic cycles, Elmore was ready for another go, this time with a very different approach.
"I think it was just a change in mindset and not putting as much pressure on myself," she said. "I let the results come to me instead of worrying about what my results were going to be. At that point, I had kids, I had started my career, so I felt less pressure to achieve something in the sport to be able to move on with the next phase of my life … because I was in the next phase of my life."
With a big support system and a new mindset, Elmore raced to a Canadian marathon record in 2020, finishing in 2:24:50. With this performance, she was selected to represent Canada at the Tokyo Games.
Malindi Elmore (second from right) running for Canada at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. (Photo by Mark Dadswell / Getty Images)
The qualification allowed Elmore to become the track and field athlete with the largest gap between two Olympics appearances. When she toed the line for the race in 2021, after a one-year postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it had been 17 years since she had stepped on the track to represent Canada in Athens. Having first fallen in love with the sport as a 4-year-old watching the Olympic marathon, competing in that very same event felt like a full-circle moment.
"There's really no feeling like representing your country at the Olympic Games … putting on that singlet and standing on the line, knowing that you've got so many people cheering for you and so much pride in what you're representing," she said. "I take it very seriously to do my best because I know that I have so many people back in Canada and the States who are cheering and who have supported me. I feel like I'm running for a lot of people when I go and race."
Elmore set her goals high for the 2021 Games, aiming for a top-10 finish in her Olympic marathon debut. She achieved that goal with a 9th-place finish, completing an extraordinary comeback story.
But she wasn't done quite yet.
"I was like, 'The Olympics are now only 3 years away, so why would I stop now?'" she said. "'I'm still feeling good and still running well.'"
Now 20 years after her first Olympic appearance, Elmore has been selected to represent Canada in the marathon and will travel to Paris for her third Olympics. As things will look much different than they did three years ago, she looks forward to being able to share the experience with her support system that has been with her through every step of the journey.
"I am really motivated because now my family gets to come," she said. "My kids, who are 6 and 10 … it's a really good age for them to remember this experience and be there with me. I'm really motivated to do well for them and to hopefully give them some lifelong memories of being at the Olympics watching their mom compete."
While being a mother, having a career and training to be an Olympian has been challenging, Elmore thinks her ability to balance it all boils down to the word that defines her career: resilience.
"It's not always easy, and it's not always linear," she said. "Sometimes there's a lot of delayed gratification because what you're putting in at the time may not always show off for a really long time. Twenty years later, I'm reaping some of the rewards from the struggles that I had when I was a young athlete in college."
"There are going to be ups and downs in sport," she added. "There were times I wanted to give up, and there were times when I wanted to quit. Sometimes you have to work through a lot of disappointment and failure to succeed. If you give up on yourself, then you don't have a chance to show what you can do."
