Ramathe's daily schedule is set to almost military precision: the school run in his minibus, which take two hours a five-kilometre run and a quick shower, then off to his second job as a hairdresser. It takes "guts and determination" to run the race, and a "never-say-die attitude", he added. Today, he predicted, this year's top 10 male runners would probably "all be black". Initially it was a "very small., exclusively" white male event, he recalled. "It was a huge breakthrough because there had been a lot of people who said no black runners," said nine-times Comrades winner 67-year-old Bruce Fordyce. His victory was a huge boost for those opposed to the institutionalised racial segregation at the heart of the system. In 1989, railway worker Tshabalala Sam Tshabalala became the first black man to win the race, towards the end of the apartheid era. The aim was to alter the country's image. At the time apartheid South Africa was banned from international competition, including the Olympics.
It was only in 1975 that black runners and women were allowed to take part. The gruelling 90-kilometre (56-mile) race was first run in 1921.ĭubbed the Ultimate Human Race, the Comrades Marathon was launched to honour South African soldiers killed in the WWI. As a result, he said, he was a "better husband, better father, better community leader.
"You just need to be disciplined."Īnd for him, it has been a life-altering race. Part of the attraction is that you do not need money or special equipment to cross the finishing line, he said. "It is very emotional," he said of the moment he returned home brandishing a finisher's medal last year. For Ramathe, this is the second consecutive year he has taken on the challenge, running 90 kilometres through the steep green hills of KwaZulu-Natal province, in the southeast of the country.
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