Menzi Magubane
Spending the past weekend in Dundee, North of KwaZulu-Natal, for the second Prince Mangosuthu Ultra Marathon, I wondered why these marathons are not held all over the country.
I don’t remember seeing any of our long distance runners in last month’s Tokyo Olympic Games and yet we have an abundance of talented runners in the country.
The passion of the young runners made me wonder why we only have the Comrades Marathon in KZN and the Two Ocean Marathon in Cape Town.
Our runners – especially those who are in the rural area such as Dundee – are hungry for more races. This tournament gave the runners from all over the country and outside of our borders an opportunity to compete again.
All of them were running for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic began and the full 52km was a bit too much from most of them, but you could see they were happy to be back on the road again.
Male winner Nkosikhona Mhlakwane and female winner Loveness Madziva walked away with R100,000 each.
Rubbing shoulders with ultra marathon superstar Bongimusa Mthembu must have been inspirational for the young athletes. Another motivation must be knowing that those who made good times will qualify for both Comrades and Two Oceans.
Why can’t we have more provinces organising these marathons to give their local runners a chance to be part of big marathons?
Who knows? Maybe another Josiah Thugwane, who won the Marathon at the 1996 Olympics, is waiting in the wings.
Athletics South Africa (ASA) should encourage provinces and their local municipalities to start staging tournaments like the one in Dundee.
ASA will have top runners at their disposal and those rural municipalities will get recognition and see their tourism grow with local people benefitting – exactly as it happened in Dundee.
