Johannesburg — KwaZulu-Natal Athletics president Steve Mkasi should by all accounts be a little deflated as he anticipates next Sunday’s 2023 edition of the Durban International Marathon that doubles up as the South African National Marathon Championship.
The fact that defending champion Tumelo Motlagale will not be participating is reason enough to have the organiser feeling like he has failed. Add to that the fact that local marathon top dogs Stephen Mokoka and Melikhaya Frans are also giving the race a miss, and Mkasi should be scratching his head wondering just what kind of national championship he will be hosting.
But he is an old horse in road running. Mkasi was among the founding members of Phuma KZN Athletics Club, and knows just how shallow SA’s marathon well is.
“The reality is that the marathon field in South Africa is not that big,” said Mkasi, who sits on the Comrades Marathon Association board.
He is right. In SA, ultra marathon is the main race for road runners with almost every standard marathon run in the country a means towards earning a ticket into the world famous Comrades or Two Oceans marathons.
The small field for the national championships notwithstanding, Mkasi believes they have assembled a strong field and put up incentives appetising enough for Sunday’s race to be a cracker.
The winner’s prize money of R50 000 should be a lure for the athletes to run their socks off. And for SA runners there’s also the R20 000 national championships winner’s cheque to entice the likes of Philani Buthelezi, Gladwin Mzazi, Sboniso Sikhakhane as well as last year’s female champion Janet Mbhele into running the race of their lives.
But that’s not all.
“We have put together very good incentives for the runners to qualify for the IAAF World Championships,” Mkasi said, referring to the huge amounts of $10 000 (that is a cool R181 400) set aside for a man and woman who will complete the race in 2hr 08min 10sec and 2:26:50 respectively.
Any runners-up who clock those times will also be rewarded with half the amount.
Though the times may appear a little fast and probably unattainable given that last year’s winners clocked 2:11:15 and 2:43:07, Mkasi believes the field they have assembled has it in them clock those times .
“The fastest athlete in the field has a 2:06 personal best and there’s another one who has a 2:07. So those qualifying times are not out of their reach. And when you have such fast runners, they are sure to pull the rest of the field with them,” he said.
And the organisers have made an effort to help the athletes by organising pace-makers.
“Mbuleli Mathanga who has a 60 minute half marathon (time) will be pacing the men up to 25km and we believe he will get them there in a very fast time. We have also organised a few runners to help pace the female runners so that they too can have a chance of clocking fast times,” Mkasi said.
There might be just 686 athletes registered for the SA National Marathon Championship, but Mkasi says there will be upwards of 3 000 on the streets during the Durban International Marathon next weekend.
“With KZN, you can’t really plan ahead. Entries for the race were very slow at the start, but now we have above 3 000. We hope to hit the 5 000 mark when we also include the 10km participants. So we are on the right path,” he chuckled, clearly not worried that Motlagale and Frans have opted to run the Boston Marathon next month, while Mokoka is recovering from his epic run that saw him miss out on smashing Gert Thys’ long-standing national record of 2:06:33 by just nine seconds in Osaka last weekend.
IOL Sport