Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 114, January 2019 | Page 48

RACE WALKING
Exceptional Elsa
With multiple World Masters Champion titles, SA Records and a
World Record over 20km in the 70-74 age category to her name,
Elsa Meyer continues to walk away with honour after honour in
her glittering career. – BY SEAN FALCONER
W
hen 72-year-old race walker Elsa
Meyer slipped and tumbled down
a flight of wooden stairs the first
night after Team SA arrived in Malaga, Spain
for last September’s World Masters Athletics
Championships, she thought her meet was
over before it had even begun. Ironically,
she had already worked her way back from
a long-term injury earlier in the year. “I was
well prepared, but when I fell from the top
to the bottom of those stairs, and there was
blood, scrapes and bruises, I thought I was
done for the World Champs. Luckily I still
managed to compete,” she recalls.
In fact, she went on to claim four gold
medals and a silver, including wins in the
5000m (clocking 32:15.8), 10km (1:04:11)
and 20km (2:14:28) events, and blowing
away the challenge of the strong New Zealander in her 70-74 age category. “When I passed
her on the second lap, I knew it was going to be OK. I wasn’t happy with my times, but I
was happy to win medals!”
She also joined forces with Winnie Koekemoer and Hildegaard Vey in the team competitions,
racing in the 65-69 category, and taking the team gold in the 20km and team silver in the
10km. “We had a really strong team, but Winnie picked up an injury on the first morning, which
she had to nurse through the meet with massages and prayers, and if not for that, I think we
would have won the team gold instead of silver in the 10km as well,” says Elsa.
Sporting Traditions
It really is no surprise that Elsa is so fit and active at her age. After all, she comes from
a very sporty family, where she and all four of her siblings earned provincial colours for
softball, while her aunt earned Springbok colours in three sports and was an active Masters
athlete until the age of 86, and her mom played bowls till the age of 82! Her father also
played a big role in her early sporting development while growing up in Paarl and later
Pretoria: He kept racing pigeons and when they were competing he wanted everybody out
of the house, so that it would be quiet when the birds returned, and thus the whole Cronje
family would spend time on the sports fields as a result.
Still, Sunday afternoons after church were reserved for family activities, and when the children
went to university and got weekend jobs, she and Hennie began walking to stay active. That
lasted for a few years until Hennie tired of the walking, around the same time that Elsa’s
sewing hobby turned into a part-time clothing business. She also put walking on hold due to
spinal surgery in the early 80s to have three vertebrae fused, but she became active again in
the mid 80s when she took up aerobics, later running her own aerobics group for five years.
She also joined her local gym, but when it closed in 1996, Elsa decided to return to walking.
When her daughter Danel encouraged her to do the Makhulu Fun Walk in Irene, Elsa finished
eighth and discovered that she had real talent for race walking. She then joined Danel at
Wingate Running Club and was soon consistently winning the 50-plus age category at
events. “I would sometimes splash out on a dinner for Hennie and I when I won money,” she
says, then jokingly adds that she initially used to ‘bribe’ him to go along with her to races. “I
told him to come with me because he could get free Coke if he walked, and that worked for
a while, but eventually he said he would just buy his own!”
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ISSUE 114 JANUARY 2019 / www.modernathlete.co.za
Elsa married Hennie Meyer at the age of 20 and was subsequently selected for the
Springbok softball team, but had to withdraw when she found out she was pregnant with
the first of three daughters. She continued playing while raising her daughters, but by the
1970s was finding it hard to fit in her own sport with all the children’s activities, on top of
her work as an administrator in the Department of Welfare and Pensions, so she decided to
retire from the sport.