Durban - Zwelitsha “Tiger” Gono is set to become the first black runner to complete 40 Comrades Marathons, joining a stellar club with just nine others to have run 40 or more.
Only Dave Rogers (45 medals), Barry Holland and Louis Massyn (43 medals), Clive Crawley, Dave Lowe, Alan Robb (42 medals), David Williams (41 medals), Kenny Craig and Riel Hugo (40) have finished more Comrades Marathons than Gono.
The former Eastern Cape school teacher, 64, and now retired, started running in the Comrades before black people were allowed to participate. The race now known as the ultimate human race, was a white men only affair at the time.
Black people were only officially allowed to take part from 1975; by then Gono had already completed two marathons. This was validated by the Comrades Marathon Association and he was duly awarded with those medals later.
Efforts to interview the Bizana-based runner, known as Tiger, proved futile this week.
His friend, Isaac Ngwenya, who presented him with the Spirit of the Comrades award in 2004, said Gono was a strong personality and would definitely be finishing the race this weekend.
“He is a very strong runner. We always start together but he leaves me and we have to meet at the finish,” he joked on Thursday.
“If he is here to run, he is here to finish that race, he is a lean machine,” he said.
Comrades spokeswoman, Delaine Cools, said Gono had 14 silver medals among his 39 medals and had run his best race in 1976 when he finished 20th as a then 25-year-old.
Ngwenya said Gono was now a pig farmer in Bizana and had retired as a school teacher three years ago.