Natalia Malaga: Self-control & Enthusiasm!

Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State of The us, when explained: “There are no secrets to good results. Accomplishment is the result of perfection, hard work, finding out from failure, loyalty to those for whom you operate and persistence”. Certainly Mr. Powell could effectively have been conversing about Natalia Málaga, the very last survivor of the golden generation of Peruvian female volleyball gamers who received a number of trophies above the previous 50 %-century, placing Latin America’s woman sport 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 system.

A-Born Athlete!

Practically everyone in Peru has heard her name in modern many years. Inside of Peruvian circles, she is one particular of the two most common and highly regarded folks, together with Gastón Acurio, who is often referred to as 1 of the gurus in Globe Gastronomic.

She was born Natalia Maria Málaga Dibos on January 26,1964 into a sporting loved ones in Lima (Peru), the third largest country on the South American mainland. In this context, she showed assure as an athlete at a really youthful age, profitable considerably encouragement from her teachers, close friends, and team-mates. Like many other women in her hometown, she dreamed of a single working day playing for Peru’s women’s volleyball squad.

She was modest, but overcame this with her voracious urge for food for wins. More than people years, she participated in a great number of volleyball meets, a activity that far more than any other embodies Peru’s multi-racial culture. Shortly afterward, Málaga’s fantastic expertise and discipline won the consideration of many coaches, among them Norma Velarde and Luisa Fuentes (both who fired the countrywide interest in volleyball in the nineteen seventies when they claimed many best honors).

Not extended afterwards, she was promoted to Peru’s under-17 national volleyball group. In the course of this period of time, she started to earn her very first worldwide fulfills. As early 1980 as, for instance, she lifted the two the Continental Cup for Ladies Underneath-seventeen and the Below-19 South American Event. That same yr, she received favorable notices and was widely talked about as a attainable Olympic sportwoman to go to what is now Russia to compete in the Video games of the 23rd Olympiad. However she handed unnoticed in the former Soviet Union when the junior squad competed towards senior teams from Iron Curtain nations around the world this sort of as the Democratic German Republic (GDR) and the USSR. At Moscow, for illustration, the host country defeat Peru 3-1. But that was a huge knowledge in a time when the Latin American republic had not funds to make pre-Olympic tours -not like Cuba, United states of america, Brazil, and Japan– on Far East and Jap Europe. Nearly all of Peru’s costs had been compensated by the Kremlin at the 1980 Moscow Game titles.

Thanks to this experience, virtually two many years afterwards, an eighteen-yr-outdated rookie, Málaga created a feeling at the Junior South American (SA) Championship when Peru claimed gold at the price of Brazil. For the duration of those several years, Peru created what has been referred to as the “miracle of Latin America”. As Volleyball Camps in the Third Entire world, there ended up a lot of world-class volleyball gamers regardless of several obstructions: Denisse Fajardo, Gina Torrealba, Cecilia del Risco, Cenaida Uribe, and Aurora Heredia, amongst other folks international stars.

Nonetheless in time, by mid-1984 precisely, the nation’s head coach Guy Bok Park had his eyes on Málaga to replace Carmen Pimentel. Thereafter, she turned a celebrity in her residence place, along with her other team-mates, as the nationwide aspect came shut to successful the Olympic glory in late 1988.

Regardless of getting one of the shortest customers of the Peruvian volleyball squad, she was one particular of the biggest gamers in the background of sport in an period when her place had been devastated by 1 of Latin America’s worst conflicts (during those troubled moments, the Peruvian squad was an exception in World athletics). Her Olympic management was (and as coach currently) quite equivalent to the former goalkeeper José Luis Chilavert of Paraguay, who was often referred to as one of the world’s best footballers in the previous half-century. Soon after a 23-12 months sporting occupation, Málaga formally retired from the activity in 2003. Following Peru’s declining volleyball picture, she turned to mentor. She wants to place the Latin American republic back into the international race.