Olympic runner Robert de Castella MBE won his first marathon in 1982 at Fukuoka, Japan in world-record time. He went on to win six more marathons, including the Helsinki 1983 world championship, and the 1983 and 1991 Rotterdam Marathon, which was his final marathon.

In the course of his nine-year running career, Rob also won two Commonwealth Games gold medals (1982 and 1986) and the title of Marathon Runner of the Decade. He is still the only Australian runner to have finished in the top ten in three successive Olympic marathons.

In 2006 ‘Deek’, as he is known to athletics fans around the world, was named one of the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) 25 best-of-the-best athletes. Deek has had a strong and varied connection to the Institute, most notably as Director of the AIS from 1990 to 1995. While still an athlete, he worked with Dick Telford in the AIS Physiology lab from 1981 to 1984, learning much of the science of athletics, and was an Institute scholarship holder from 1983 to 1985.

Since his retirement from athletics, Deek has been actively involved in many local and national business and organisations dedicated to encouraging healthy living for children and adults.

In 1997 Deek joined the board of the Sport Australia Hall of Fame and currently chairs its selection committee. He is also the Chairman of Leisure Australia Foundation and Leisure Co — which manages 40 sport and recreation facilities for local governments in Australia and New Zealand — and is the founder of SmartStart for Kids, a not-for-profit organisation that has assessed the health and fitness levels of over 45 000 primary school children since being established in 1999.

Rob is very active in his local community, running the gluten and grain-free Deeks Bakery and Café in two outlets in Canberra. After loosing his family home and many of his medals in the 2003 bushfires, he became a strong supporter the ACT Bushfire Recovery Taskforce and, only this year, staged the inaugural Stromlo Running Festival, a three-day community festival of off-road running events.