As Ludwick Mamabolo entered Kingsmead for the final lap of the 2016 Comrades, a commentator on SABC described him as ‘beaten’. Bruce Fordyce, sitting in the same studio at the finish line of the race, was having none of it.
“He’s not beaten,” said Fordyce with not a little bit of grit. “He’s not beaten,” he repeated. “He’s run incredibly well. There was just one man who was faster than him today.” Fordyce knows the Comrades.
He knows Caroline Wostmann was not beaten. There was just one woman who was quicker than her - Charne Bosman, who won her first ultra-marathon yesterday.
Bosman surged past Wostmann in the final kilometres, her face as dead pan as she could make it.
Not long after, the enormity of leading the Comrades hit her and her face creased up as she wrestled with the emotions and held back the tears. It was, she said, a “dream come true! It’s a miracle to win this race.”
The Comrades have adopted the slogan, “It will humble you”.
It humbled Wostmann, who had flown out of the blocks and was giving high fives to the spectators along the way. She began cramping with 15km to go.
Then a motorbike got too close to her and she bumped into it and her legs wobbled. The bike was riding alongside her as she went through a watering station. It should never have been there.
A motorbike behind her fell over trying to avoid her. The world froze. A nation gasped.
Wostmann had been walking as she had done last year, but while those 2015 walks had been planned, this year she was in trouble, her legs barely holding her up.
She stumbled and fell. She drank bottle after bottle, but the damage had been done.
She was done. She walked some of the final kilometres like a drunk trying to stand upright. Bosman spotted the lead car with 5km to go and she began to believe.
Wostmann has become the darling of the Comrades.
She crossed the line and smiled as she congratulated Bosman.
Then she smiled and collapsed, making jokes about herself as she did so. She smiled as she crawled into the shade.
The smile never left her. She had finished second in the Comrades.
As Fordyce will remind you, she was not beaten.
RIP Des Blow
I only got to know Des Blow, who passed away recently, at the Nedbank Golf Challenge. He laughed. A lot.
He laughed at his own jokes, which he would deliver in a scattergun cackle before interrupting himself by laughing again.
He was a talented journalist with a nose for a story and a wicked sense of humour. He famously set up boxer Big John Tate with a white model, Mercedes Kornfeld, in 1979. She kissed and told of their tryst, which Des, naturally, wrote about.
This earned the ire of the government as the Immorality Act banned sex across the colour bar.
Andy Capostagno tells a tale of Des at the NGC: “I shall always remember him walking off the casino floor at Raffles early in the morning one Million Dollar.
“In his fist was a wad of cash and as he passed me on the steps he said, It’s taken me a long time, but Sol Kerzner and I are finally even'.”
RIP Des, we will miss your laugh.
I bet my missus
Jasmeet Kaur began to be hassled by men in Kanpur in India. She couldn’t figure out why until she discovered her husband, Ravinder Singh, a serial gambler, had put her up as a ‘stake’ in an IPL betting game. The Hindustan Times reported that Singh had ‘lost’ his wife on a bet.
“With the help of social activists, Kaur, who owns a boutique, lodged a complaint with the police. A case has been registered a case but Singh is missing,” wrote the newspaper. “He lost all his money in stock markets, so put his wife at stake, police said.
“The couple, which lives in Govind Nagar, married five years ago. Things turned bitter from the very start, Kaur alleged.
“Her husband, who traded shares, took away all her jewellery.
“Over the years, he either sold or gambled away all the valuables. He was planning to sell the house when the IPL gambling fiasco happened.” - The Star