Who to watch in Two Oceans
DAVID GATEBE is intent on doing to the Old Mutual Two Oceans record what he did to the Comrades Marathon down-run mark two years ago – obliterate it.
“David says he’d like to break the record,” his coach John Hamlett said yesterday.
“And he’s looking good for it. Of course it is not an easy record and with the second restrictions at Two Oceans, we will find it a little difficult to feed him well. But he is going for it.”
Gatebe and Edwin Khonkhobe are Hamlett’s two athletes who will be competing for the title.
“Gift (Kelehe) is going too but he is merely doing it as build up for Comrades. So he will run as I tell him to.
“He will go gently at the beginning but if the opportunity arises, he will eat up the rest of the field in the second half and who knows what might happen at the end,” the Entsika Athletics Club coach explained.
“Edwin is a very fast new kid on the ultras block who has really come alive and we are hoping he gets onto the podium.”
It is Gatebe, however, that champion Lungile Gongqa and the rest of the field should be worried about.
The disappointments of his poor run at last year’s Comrades long behind him, Gatebe is in top form and keen to not only win his second Two Oceans title, but to do so by usurping Thomson Magawana as the record holder.
In 2014, Gatebe finished first in an impressive time of 3:08:54. Fast as it was, that time was a massive five minutes and 10 seconds slower than Magawana’s long-standing record from back in 1988.
That Gatebe then never really featured at Two Oceans – his other two races saw him finish 42nd (in 2014) and 666th (2016) – begs the question as to whether he can live up to his promise.
But then again, this is the same man who smashed the long-standing Comrades Down Run record of Russian Leonid Shvetsov into smithereens and still managed to do push-ups at the finish line in celebration of the new time of 5:18:19.
That he is a talented and fast runner cannot be denied as evidenced in a training session with him and his teammates last year. Then, two weeks ago, Gatebe and Kelehe looked in sublime form as they flew to the finish just after the marathon mark of the Om Die Dam Ultra Marathon. And they were merely training.
“Om Die Dam was just mileage training for he guys. And it went well for them. But David is on a mission for Two Oceans.
“The question I have is whether he’ll be in the right frame of mind for it after our training camp’s farmhouse (in Dullstroom) was broken into while he was there two weeks ago,” Hamlett said.
That incident, during which no one was injured and of which the perpetrators have since been arrested, left Gatebe a bit shaken.
“David is a sensitive kind of guy and we’ve even had to have him examined by a psychologist, but he says he is ready.”
‘David is a sensitive kind of guy and we’ve had to have him examined’