Rookie Sandile eyes Ironman World Championship title
SOMETIME later today, out in Hawaii in the US, a warrior from Gingindlovu, near Richards Bay in KwaZulu-Natal, will dive into the cool waters of the Kailua-Kona Bay along with hundreds others looking to become a world champion.
That 3.86km swim will be but just the beginning of a gruelling sporting undertaking which will see him get on the bicycle for a 180.25km ride before he attempts to run a full marathon (42.2km) in “under three hours”.
Sandile Shange nurses ambitions of becoming the first black South African to win the Ironman World Championship. And while this is his maiden appearance at the global event, the rookie is confident he will achieve his goal.
After all, he was the first black South African to earn a podium finish at a full Ironman event when he finished second in his age category in Gqeberha last year.
“I want to test my limits to see if I can represent South Africa and make history there. I want to get medals. I want to be the first black South African to get on the podium in Kona.
“My first goal is to win my age category but I also want to win the overall event. I will be competing in the amateur section.
“When I win, I will be the second one from here after Donovan Dutch who won the amateur division last year.”
Shange has had the pleasure of training with Dutch and says he learnt a lot from the Durbanite.
“It was great motivation to train with the champion. And he said he needed me to help with the running. And he has promised to give me his bike so I can race with it in Kona.”
Before departure for Hawaii, Shange also had another goal – to meet his hero, German triathlon legend Jan Frodeno.
“That guy is my hero,” Shange said, his face lighting up, during our interview on the Durban North Beach promenade.
“He is a champion of the long-distance triathlon and he holds many records. He has been untouchable for almost three years and he has not been beaten in many races. Since I got into triathlon, it has been my dream to meet him and now it has come true. I can’t wait to shake his hand. But I will only do that after the race, not before.”
Last week, Shange arrived in Kona to the news that Frodeno would not be competing after crashing his bike while training.
But the three-time Ironman world champion and 2008 Olympic triathlon winner is in Hawaii. Shange met him and did more than shake his hand.
“He is here. I had a long chat with him,” Shange told me via text after I’d seen him posing with Frodeno (arms around each other’s necks and smiling) in his WhatsApp status video.
“He asked me to join him on the table after the race … at the after party.”
If ever Shange needed a push to do well then that is it.
He can’t be going to Frodeno’s table as a loser, can he?
The reality, though, is that Shange will not be lacking in motivation.
Granted he has already achieved massively by making it to the global championship but he is a driven man who wants to make it big at the highest level following lots of heartache in the past.
Having taken up triathlon in 2018 following disappointment in both soccer and athletics, Shange had his heart broken in the sport when he could not make it to the world championships in 2018 and 2019 due to a lack of funds.
It was then that he decided to move to Ironman at the behest of his coach Glen Gore, who felt there was more publicity there and thus a better chance to raise funds for major international events.
And so it proved, Shange getting an offer from a stranger to pay the R70 000 world championship entry fee immediately after the race in Gqeberha.
“Another guy from Egypt came to me and asked how I was going to raise funds to go to Kona. He is an old man but he told me he had participated in Kona and said he will help me raise funds.”
Today, the boy who quit football because “they did not sign me up at Orlando Pirates even after I’d scored three goals during a trial match”, will pit his swimming, cycling and running skills against the world’s best triathletes.
Having quit football, Shange took to running and did well enough to earn a sports scholarship to study at the University of Johannesburg in 2011.
But when the university decided to “cut funding to athletics in favour of rugby”, Shange had to quit his transport management studies in his third year.
Shange’s family is the typical village family that could never see sport as a career. “They never supported me. Even when I went to study at UJ because of athletics, they didn’t get it,” he said.
“When I came back they told me to go get a job. But I kept on running and I was doing well, representing the province. But I got disappointed because there was too much politics in running.
“It always seemed like whenever they selected athletes to represent South Africa, they always went for runners from Gauteng. That was discouraging.”
Gail Babic, who was Shange’s teammate at Savages Athletic Club, introduced the young man to triathlon after meeting him at the Kings Park Swimming Pool where he was doing cross-training.
Four years later, Shange is about to mix it with the world’s best at the Ironman World Championships.
And his family finally get it and they are behind him all the way.
It is a long journey from Gingindlovu to Kailua-Kona, but Shange has made the journey in style.