Going the Distance
In a lighthearted season
Communication, regardless of where it stems from or what the intent might be is what keeps many of us eager to get up in the morning.
And when we do it is often the most recent communication which leaves us aghast, enthused, challenged, bewildered or excited.
Sport is a microcosm of exactly all those emotions.
Road running can be complex depending upon the forces at play, while athletics in its entirety is more so.
Most sports are current events — in rugby, cricket, tennis and many other sports at an international level — and are educational, and depending on individual viewpoints, often frustrating.
Consider the Springbok rugby team who were led through the darkest of times, performance wise, to go on and win a World Cup for the first time as a truly transformed team representative of all.
Who could ever forget the try that saw Makazole Mapimpi and Lukanya Am work in unison to finally destroy England’s challenge in the 2019 World Cup final.
Two “Border” educated and raised young men in a team captained by Eastern Cape’s Siya Kolisi and coached by another with his roots in the province, Rassie Erasmus.
The team was the toast of most sections of society and the nation erupted in joy.
Three years on and the same man who plotted and planned a script no journalist could have envisaged is and has taken huge pressure from the world body governing rugby and is even taking backhands from former captains, coaches and some scribes.
Like I said, each day when we wake there are sequences of events not previously foreseen, and life remains interesting.
In marathon running, the Josiah Thugwane story has been told, enthused over, at times distorted, and celebrated by the nation after the, in many minds, “unlikely” gold medal triumph at the Atlanta Olympics.
There was someone, somewhere who believed it could and would happen. There would simply have to be.
This transpires on an international stage, but there are so many elevating moments that take place at the most basic of local levels and they too play a role in how a sport develops in the years that follow.
They are of course always more lighthearted in nature.
What prompted this train of thought was a WhatsApp received from Peter Hartley who I first met running the Amathole Marathon too many years ago to put in print.
He sent me a copy of the results of the Boet Rabie Handicap Marathon run from Gonubie and finishing back at the local library on December 2 1978 44 years ago next week.
The most severely “handicapped” runner was Herman van der Wilt, winner of numerous local marathons.
He started 95 minutes after the first to go off, Quinton Thiele.
It was a tough route passing the Gonubie Brick Fields on an extremely hot, humid day, as December tends to offer.
First to finish was local doctor, John Filmer.
Reading through the list there are only three of the 44 finishes I do not remember, but the rest bring back exceptional memories, like those that modern-day runners are making each time they venture out at a race.
Former Daily Dispatch stalwart, Binks Arnold, appears in the results, while only one woman features and she is documented rather strangely as Miss Estelle Tiltman.
Estelle was one of the two pioneering female distance runners in the province.
Hartley is in the results and otherwise the list reads as a who’s who of early marathon running in Border.
One man who I would like to locate from that time is “Chief” Mwati, who ran for King Athletic Club and was always entertaining on the road.
Could that be the subject of the next WhatsApp message received?
What prompted this train of thought was a WhatsApp received from Peter Hartley who I first met running the Amathole Marathon too many years ago to put in print