The book Comrades Marathon: 101 Years of Highlights and Heroes is a compelling collector’s item

By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor

This year’s Comrades Marathon competition has just ended and records have been broken. Full of drama those who tried to cheat their way onto the famous track, fortunately have been caught and have rightly been banned to compete in this popular international marathon for a number of years. What a un-sportsman-like behaviour.

It is a disgrace to want to cheat your way into such an established marathon that boasts a record of integrity and hard work by international athletes. Is it the money or fame that could have driven those souls to try their luck and got caught on their tracks? Whatever it was that made them do what they tried to do was a disgrace. Period. Hopefully other potential future cheats have learned from this disgraceful incident.

The fact is Comrade Marathon, come the winter season in South Africa, is an event many look forward to, both participants and couch participants like me and others.

This year this track event turned 101, more than a life time for many souls, and this means it has probably outlived the lives of the debutant runners.

Thankfully there is a book that has been published that looks at the Comrade Marathons by someone who for years was part and parcel of this track event.

The point is the Comrades Marathon has grown over the last century from a humble start when only a handful of runners finished to its current status as the world’s greatest ultra-marathon.

This fascinating story tells the tale of its glories, its disappointments, its triumphs and tragedies, beginning with the early heroes, then covering the 1970s, when official permission was finally granted for women and people of colour to run, the 1980s and nine-times winner Bruce Fordyce, democratic South Africa in the 1990s, the domination of the Russians in the early 2000s, and the ascent of black runners in the 2010s. It brings us right up to date with the last race run, in 2022, following the two-year closure as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

I wonder what was in the minds of the cheats as they watched the [proceedings when on June 11, the 2023 Comrades Marathon Down Run started at 05h30 at the Pietermaritzburg City Hall and ended 12 hours later at the Hollywoodbets Kingsmead Cricket Stadium in Durban, with qualifying runners having successfully covered the official route distance of 87.7km, marking the 48th Comrades Down Run –without them. Having been dramatically flushed out of the system as disgraced cheats.

Whether you are a runner of an ordinary person interested in the history of Comrades Marathon in the past 101 years, this book captures the highs and the lows. It is a collector’s item. Tom Cottrell has done a good job in Comrades Marathon: 101 Years of Highlights and Heroes.