Three locals tackle race with help of friends
PARTICIPATING in the Comrades Marathon with a friend ensures that you have someone to motivate you along the way, but for this year’s three wheelchair participants, their friends will be doing much more than motivating them.
Wheelchair participant Grant Adams will be attempting his first Comrades – with the assistance of his friend and supporter, Andrew Murray.
Adams, 40, a former marketing director who is happily married with two children, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis about 11 years ago.
The two got the idea to do the race when Adams told Murray that running was one of the things he had missed the most since he had lost some of his mobility.
The two other wheelchair participants are no strangers to the race, with both Anita Engelbrecht and Chaeli Mycroft having taken part before.
Engelbrecht will be pushed by Hilton Murray while Mycroft will have the assistance of Stuart Cullum and Mark Ferreira.
Engelbrecht successfully completed the 2016 Comrades in a time of 10:57:51, earning a Comrades bronze medal, while Mycroft holds two Comrades medals, a bronze and a Vic Clapham, after completing the last two editions of the race, thanks to commitment and her dedicated wheelchair assistants.
Mycroft, a 23-year-old ability activist with cerebral palsy, was awarded the International Children’s Peace Prize in 2011.
Engelbrecht, 25, who has cerebral palsy, graduated from Stellenbosch University with a B Com degree in management accounting, and is completing her honours through the University of South Africa.
She has also participated in the Cape Town Cycle Tour, the Red Hill Marathon and the Two Oceans ultra marathon.
US self-propelled wheelchair participant, Jean Altomari, will also be participating, and will be attempting to win a Comrades Back-to-Back Medal this year, after earning a Comrades bronze medal in last year’s Up Run, which she completed in a time of 10:16:50.
Visually impaired athlete, Mandla Zwane of Nongoma in northern KZN, will be running his 12th Comrades this year.
He has become quite a personality among the Comrades community, after disclosing that for a large part of his Comrades running career, he had been guided only by the footsteps of the runners in front of him.
DURBAN: Attempting to call the result of Sunday’s Comrades Marathon is tantamount to telling navy blue from black in the dark – impossible.
Such is the closeness in standards of the contenders for the 93rd running of the world famous KwaZulu-Natal Ultra.
How does one, for instance, separate defending Down Run champion and record holder David Gatebe from perennial runner-up in the race down from Pietermaritzburg to Durban Ludwick Mamabolo, who won it in 2012?
Some will point to the fact that Gatebe smashed the nineyear-old record and in the process got Mamabolo to eat his dust, so they make the softspoken 37-year-old from Kroonstad in the Free State their favourite.
The Mamabolo brigade will, however, point to his incredible consistency in the Down Run – four of his seven gold medals come from the run towards the coast – to illustrate just why he is the better of the two.
But Sunday’s race is not a two-horse race.
There is also last year’s Up Run winner, Bongmusa Mthembu in the equation.
The Arthur Ford star is one of only two runners in the race – the other is Zimbabwean Stephen Muzhingi – to have won the Ultimate Human Race in both directions.
Back in 2014, local lad Mthembu was triumphant in an impressive time of 5.28.34, with Mamabolo again the bridesmaid.
When he ruled supreme last year, Mthembu became the first South African to win the race more than once since Bruce Fordyce’s dominance.
Granted the recent history of the race since Mamabolo ended Muzhingi’s domination – the Zimbabwean was champion from 2009 to 2011 – suggests that Mthembu will probably not feature in the top 10. But he is an incredibly good runner, the man from Bulwer.
And then there is Gift Kelehe, the 2015 Up Run champion who finished third last year. While he is generally viewed as more of an Up Run specialist, Kelehe is no slow-coach going down from the province’s capital as evidenced by his two gold medal finishes, third in 2014 and eighth in 2012.
Of course Muzhingi will always be a threat although it appears his best years are way behind him.
It had appeared his compatriot Marko Mambo had also seen better days but his great win in the Om Die Dam 50km earlier in the year shows there’s every reason to believe he can improve on his Down Run PB of 5.33. Do that, and he will surely be in the top five if not three.
Two-time gold medallist Prodigal Khumalo had an impressive win at the Zululand Ultra Marathon in March that came on the back of December’s fantastic Cape Trail 100km success.
Outside of South Africans and Zimbabweans, the likes of England’s Steve Way, Swede Fritjof Fagerlund, both gold medalists last year, Kenya’s Melly Kennedy, American Geoff Burns and the handful of Lesotho runners are keen to make a name for themselves.