Gift, Gatebe ready to fire at Comrades
Tom Tom boys eager to retain title
They have chosen Dullstroom in Mpumalanga as their training ground, a small town regarded as one of SA’s premier flyfishing destinations.
The running group is made up of mineworkers and a policeman, and they are guided by a former colonel in police intelligence John Hamlett, who goes by the name of Colonel Coach.
These bits make the Tom Tom Athletics Club a unique outfit that has a history of surprises each time they line up in the Comrades Marathon.
They boast two back-to-back champions after all – last year’s down-run winner David Gatebe and the defending up-run champion Gift Kelehe.
Before the two, Kelehe’s brother Andrew did the business for Hamlett’s stable in 2001.
In fact, heading into this Sunday’s Comrades – the up-run from Durban to Pietermaritzburg – Hamlett said the eight-week training camp in Dullstroom “went well”.
“Gift [Kelehe], David [Gatebe], Charlie [Charles Mkhonto], Suprise [Makofane], Prodigal [Khumalo], are all good to go,” Hamlett said yesterday, punting his handful of hopefuls for Sunday’s race.
“Dullstroom is where champions are made; maybe we’d get a new champion from this camp again,” added Kelehe, an instructor at the Tshwane Police Academy.
He continued: “I have no pressure going there as the defending [up-run] champion. We have another surprise up our sleeve.”
“We took the title away from Stephen Muzhingi [in 2012] and it must remain here,” vowed Gatebe, a sports administrator at Impala Platinum Mine in Rustenburg, whose winning time of 5:18:19 last year smashed Russian Leonid Shvetsov’s 2007 record of 5:20:49.
Zimbabwean Muzhingi bagged an unprecedented hattrick between 2009 and 2011 before Limpopo-born Ludwick Mamabolo’s 2012 victory dismantled the foreign stranglehold on the title until last year.
Mamabolo, together with his clubmate Claude Moshiywa (2013 up-run champ), are also favourites in a star-studded Nedbank Running Club.
The “Green Dream Team” also have the SA women’s top bet in Charne Bosman, last year’s down-run champion who is expected to fly the flag in the absence of 2015 winner Caroline Wostmann who is sidelined with a hamstring injury.