Johannesburg — The absence of Comrades Marathon Up Run record holder Gerda Steyn from this year’s edition of The Ultimate Human Race has let the field wide open.
Steyn announced this week that she will be competing at the New York Marathon in November and was thus going to skip the August 28 race down in KwaZulu/Natal.
It makes for a fascinating women’s race, one at which picking an outright favourite will be tantamount to trying to tell navy blue from black in the dark — impossible.
Could this be the year that we see a black female runner winning the Comrades for the first time since women were allowed into the race back in 1975?
The only active black woman to have ever won a gold medal at the ultra says she is not in the shape to make history.
Fikile Mbuthuma, the Nedbank Running Club starlet who is one of just three black women to have ever made it into the top-10, will be racing at the end of the month.
But having only recently given birth to a baby boy, she does not consider herself a serious contender. She does believe, however, that a black woman could win the Comrades if the playing fields were level.
“Black women are strong. If we can get the same chances as the likes of Gerda (Steyn) and train like they do — without having to work — we would dominate the top-10. Black women are strong because some of us are from the rural areas. We grew up having to walk long distances to go to school, to pick water and firewood and all that.”
Before her, Nokuthula Nhlengetwha (ninth in 1993) and Sarah Mahlangu (seventh in 2002) were the only to her black women to win gold medals. Farwa Mentoor, coloured, is arguably the best non-white female Comrades female runner — the Capetonian having won 10 successive gold medals from 2002 to 2011 with her best feat a third-place finish in 2004.
Mbuthuma has an idea as to why a black woman is yet to win the Comrades.
“Unlike our white counterparts, most of us black women are working full-time. We squeeze training into our work schedule, so for example I try to wake early and do a 20km before going to work or afterwards. We work long hours and when we get back home, we are tired and can’t go for an afternoon run. So, two sessions a day are just not possible. Long runs can only happen on weekends.”
As if lack of time was not making things hard enough, there is also the lack of support, financially and otherwise, which makes it hard for the likes of Mbuthuma to have proper training camps to prepare.
“A black woman can never really have a training. As I am saying, some of us work. Sure, you can ask for leave, but they will give you one or two weeks, not a full month. Also, none of us can really afford an unpaid leave because we don’t even have personal sponsors compared to some of our white counterparts.”
When she finished in eighth place back in 2016, Mbuthuma thought she had established herself as a top runner and hoped to get some backing. But none came along.
“I was very pleased to win gold then, and I was really hoping that race would turn things around for me. But no one came to me, no personal sponsors came through. And camps are very costly and without a sponsor you just can’t have them. So, for all my races I’ve trained here at home. And now with my baby boy, it is worse because I just can’t afford to go away because I have no one to look after him in my absence.”
So, Mbuthuma must train the normal way by running in her own backyard. And that too has its disadvantages.
“It is a serious problem for black women because they can’t train as freely in their backyards,” road-running legend Blanche Moila who has completed 16 Comrades argues.
“Most of them work and that means they can only train early in the morning or late in the afternoon before and after work respectively. But they can’t do that alone because they run the risk of being attacked. Black women have it tough because very few of us can afford to take up running on a full-time basis. That’s why it has been so hard to see us shining at Comrades.”
For a part-timer, Mbuthuma has shone, brighter than even she would have imagined back when she and her brother used to listen to the Comrades Marathon commentary on the family radio.
“I remember every June 16 how we used to listen to the radio and Willie Mtolo was my hero and I was so sad when he didn’t finish the race and stopped in Pinetown one year. I told my mom that I want to run the race one day and finish it. She just laughed at me.”
But Mbuthuma was even more inspired by a feat she found very uncanny.
“There was this lady who ran when she was pregnant, and she finished in the top-10. That made me feel like, ‘this is nothing’ I can also run it.”
With no black female runners shining at Comrades, relatable role models were rare for a young Mbuthuma.
“When I grew up, they always spoke about Farwa Mentoor whom I really admired. There was also Riana van Niekerk and Grace de Oliviera, all of them South Africans. So, I thought there were no black ladies who ran Comrades. And then when I first watched on TV, I saw there were black women who ran, they just didn’t do well enough to get mentioned on the radio by the commentators.”
Once she started running, she realised that she was more suited to the down run and that’s where she has performed best.
In 2016, deep into training, she went to visit her mother.
“She was shocked to see how I look. You know how much we lose weight when we are training for Comrades. And my mom thought I was sick and when I told her it was because of Comrades training she told me to quit. But she changed her mind after she saw me finishing in the top-10.”
Her son is way too young (15 months) to see her race on the 28th, but he would be delighted to grow up and find out that mom was the first black woman to win the Comrades.
“Hahaha, me win the Comrades? Not this year, for sure. I have not run for almost two years. But I am happy with my training. I just want to run a sub seven hours.”