The Athletics Federation of Nigeria has officially welcomed sprint sensation Favour Ofili back into its fold, signaling a fresh chapter in the relationship between the athlete and the federation.

AFN President Tonobok Okowa expressed delight over Ofili’s return, emphasizing the need for unity and encouragement around one of Nigeria’s brightest track talents.

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According to Okowa, the focus now should be on providing the right environment for the 100m and 200m star to thrive, stressing that what she needs most from stakeholders is “love, support, encouragement and more love.”

The federation’s stance comes at a crucial time for Nigerian athletics, as it looks to rebuild trust and strengthen its athlete relations ahead of major international competitions.

Ofili’s return is expected to boost Nigeria’s sprint prospects, with the AFN hopeful that renewed backing from officials, fans, and the athletics community will help her reach her full potential on the global stage.

The Nigerian sprint star Favour Ofili was denied approval to switch allegiance to Türkiye after a ruling by World Athletics.

The decision followed a review of her application alongside ten others submitted by the Türkiye Athletics Federation, all linked to a government-backed recruitment drive ahead of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games.

Why it was rejected:
World Athletics ruled that the transfer was part of a wider strategy to recruit foreign athletes with lucrative contracts, which:

* Undermines the integrity of national competitions
* Discourages countries from developing homegrown talent
* Risks replacing local athletes with imported competitors

Despite considering her personal situation, including her participation at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the panel concluded that approving the move would compromise these core principles.

Ofili remains eligible to compete for Nigeria but cannot represent Türkiye in international events.

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Chet Sainsbury would have celebrated his 84th birthday on the weekend (Sunday 12 April) and might have had a lump in his celestial throat had he looked down on proceedings at the 2026 Totalsports Two Oceans Marathon, powered by BYD.

The legendary sports administrator would have been delighted that his widow Annemarie, who was the first professional administrator to serve at the Two Oceans, had been invited to present the Ultra-marathon winners’ trophies to Arthur Jantjies and Gerda Steyn at the prize-giving ceremony on Saturday.

He would also have given a nod of approval to the organisational standards achieved by the Two Oceans staging partner, Stillwater Sports, in just six months.

Inviting Annemarie Sainsbury to present the trophy was one of several references to past Two Oceans memories and traditions, highlighted this year Stillwater working in conjunction with the Two Oceans Board.

The return of the Two Oceans Marathon tradition of sounding the fish horn to signal the start of the race was one example. And remembering the legendary era of Two Oceans organisational excellence under Team Sainsbury was another.

Runners who had completed ten, twenty, thirty and even forty Two Oceans ‘Voyages’ over the years enjoyed the opportunity to relive memories at the Blue Number Club dinner before the weekend. Many of those included tales of the Sainsbury days, triggered by the recognition of signs that the Oceans was returning to the days of organisational excellence which had characterised its earlier years.

Chet Sainsbury had moved seamlessly into leadership once he had ended his rugby career as a fiery loose forward for Villagers, soon becoming chairperson of the rugby club.

It was as well for athletics and road running that Sainsbury chose to represent Villagers, which club shared their Brookside grounds and facilities with Celtic Harriers, founding club for the Two Oceans Marathon.

Chet and Annemarie happened to be at the Villagers grounds at Brookside and watched Natalian Derek Preiss lead a field of 185 finishers across the line in the 1975 Two Oceans. That triggered his interest in the sport and he soon took over the reins of Celtic’s other big road race – the Peninsula Marathon.

Harold Berman, another legend of the Two Oceans who had been involved in every race since it’s inauguration in 1970 until illness kept him from this year’s event, was club secretary at Celtics at the time.

“Chet Sainsbury had excelled as Race Director of the Peninsula Marathon for two years,” Berman recalled recently. “When I heard that Chris Roux was standing down (as Two Oceans Race Director) I went to Chet and told him that he would have to take over Two Oceans.

“The administration of the Two Oceans started out in the Sainsbury’s lounge – all the papers and files were there before being moved to a pre-fabricated mobile building at Brookside.”

Chet’s wife, Annamarie, had been involved from the start as race secretary before she was appointed as Race Administrator, the first full-time Two Oceans official, and she served Two Oceans for 21 years. They made a formidable team. 

A highly principled and hard-working man, Chet was not one to bend to popular demand.  He did not easily tolerate fools and ensured teams under his leadership achieved excellence in all their endeavours, resulting in road running races which were seldom surpassed in organisational excellence.

Chet hand-picked a few people to strengthen the Two Oceans in key areas. Marketing, media and sponsorships required attention and Stefanie Schultzen’s remarkable skill set in those areas took the Two Oceans to new heights during her tenure.

In 2005 she delivered the powerful tag-line, ‘The World’s Most Beautiful Marathon’ and introduced the International Friendship Run in 2007, one of the event’s most successful initiatives. Later, the popular #RunAsOne and ‘Designed to Run’ campaigns, the latter as part of Cape Town’s World Design Capital season in 2014, were part of the Schultzen-Sainsbury legacy.

“In addition to the professional team, Chet led a group of outstanding volunteers on the Two Oceans committee,” Berman continued. “They respected him completely and would do almost anything for him.  Once he decided to stand down, most of them also withdrew from the committee.”

Chet’s best qualities came to the fore in a crisis, and his leadership rescued the Two Oceans from disaster on more than one occasion, having to overcome gale force winds (which destroyed the substantial start and finish infrastructure), floods which threatened the integrity of the course and unseasonably hot weather at various times. No race was ever cancelled.

Each time Chet’s calm and firm direction turned around the situation which had threatened calamity.

By the time Chet Sainsbury stepped down from Oceans Directorship after the 2007 event, the 56km race had attracted almost 10 000 entries, while the half marathon, introduced in 1998, had grown to close on 8000. He had set new standards in road running administration and taken the sport to new levels.

Chet continued to take part in the Ultra-marathon and in 2013 he answered a call to stand in for a year as Acting Director, a role which extended to 2015, before Carol Vosloo was appointed in 2016.

Chet ran the first of his 32 Two Oceans Ultra-marathons at 35 in 1978 and the last in 2014 at 71, with his fastest time of 3 hr 58 min 01 sec achieved in 1987.

The launch of the “Sainsbury medal” in 2006 for runners running the 56km faster than 5 hours, reflects the esteem in which both Chet and Annemarie have been held by Two Oceans. 

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They’re calling him ‘King Arthur’ in Hopetown this weekend after the town’s new favourite son, Arthur Jantjies, became their ‘knight in shining armour’, putting his rivals to the sword to win the Totalsports Two Oceans Marathon, powered by BYD, this morning (Saturday 10 April).

And creating history in her favourite race, Gerda Steyn devastated the strongest women’s field in Two Oceans history to win the ‘World’s Most Beautiful Marathon’ in Cape Town for an unprecedented seventh time.

With a population of just over 10 000, Hopetown in the Northern Cape Province is best known for the discovery of two of South Africa’s largest diamonds almost two hundred years ago. Today they discovered another and its name is Arthur Jantjies!   

In one of the biggest surprises in the 56-year history of the race, Two Oceans 56km debutant, Jantjies, 25, ran the perfect race in ideal running conditions, biding his time behind the leaders before unleashing a powerful final 8km burst that took him to victory.

The strength of Jantjies’ finish left Two Oceans champions for the past two years, Onalenna Khonkhobe and Joseph Seutloali, for dead and he raced home in 3 hrs 09 min 25 sec, 35 seconds clear of Khonkhobe and the fastest time in the past four years.  

“I can’t explain how I’m feeling,” Jantjies remarked. “Winning the Two Oceans Marathon is huge – it changes my life!

“God is good. And I must thank my coach for all he did. I had great competition today – my competitors put up a great challenge.

“I wasn’t surprised at my win because I had put in the hard work,” Jantjies admitted. “Training for six weeks in Dulstroom with my coach left me feeling confident in my ability.

“Going up Constantia Nek, I told myself ‘just let them do all the work and run behind them. Save my energy for the finish and just come through when it’s pick up time’. And that’s what happened.”

Playfully, Jantjies acknowledged his status as the ‘unknown warrior’, his hands across his face as he ran onto the University of Cape Town’s Green Mile near the finish. But the ‘reveal party’ and the reign of King Arthur began as he broke both his cover and the tape to win the biggest prize of his life, pocketing R380 000 for the win.

Moving to the John Hamlett-coached Pan African Resources (PAR) Elite Running Club proved an outstanding move for Jantjies, who flourished in the company of the club’s leading athletes. 

Hamlett has enjoyed considerable success over more than a decade with his charges including 2013 Two Oceans winner, David Gatrebe, and 2015 Comrades Marathon champion, Gift Kelehe. Being exposed to such company at high altitude in Dulstroom, Mpumalanga, did wonders for Jantjies, whose credentials coming into the race were modest, at best.

A marathon PB of 2:19:32, achieved in finishing 23^rd behind Elroy Gelant at the ASA Championships in Durban in 2024, 26^th position in 2:22:40 at the Cape Town Marathon later that year and 9^th place in last year’s ASA Championships at the Peninsula Marathon in Cape Town in 2:27:07 would scarcely have caused his rivals concern going into the race.

But his two top ten gold medals in the Two Oceans Half Marathon in the past two years pointed to speed and talent and the training camp in Dulstroom proved the perfect tonic.

One person not surprised at Jantjies victory was Gerda Steyn, who enjoyed a number of training runs with him during her own preparation in Dulstroom. “I’m really pleased for him – he has significant talent and is a wonderfully humble person,” she said.

And whereas Steyn’s own success was anything but surprising, her hard=fought victory over some of Africa’s leading ultra-marathon athletes is something to be savoured and celebrated.

Not since Bruce Fordyce’s domination at Comrades Marathon in the 1980s has the country produced an athlete of the talent, determination and sheer professionalism to sustain an ultra-marathon career at the highest level for more than a decade.

“Today for my main goal was to win my seventh title at the Two Oceans Marathon so I’m very happy that I achieved what I set out to do,” Hollywood Athletics Club athlete, Steyn, reflected after crossing the finish line in 3:27:43, just 49 seconds outside her 2024 race record and the second fastest time ever recorded.

Steyn finished strongly and still had the energy to jog an additional 100 metres or so to acknowledge the support of her fans.

In contrast, her closest rivals, second-placed Kenyan, Margaret Jepchumba, and Zimbabwe-born Nobuhle Nobukhosi Tshuma, who finished third, collapsed and crawled to the finish and were stretchered away to recover in the medical tent.

“I knew going into the race that I faced a very strong field. So I chose to race hard from the start to try to prevent any rival from getting away.

“At one stage I saw that the record was a possibility and in the end I was less than a minute outside the mark. But today was all about my seventh win”.

Might Steyn consider changing her tactics in future to give herself the best chance of improving the record?

“I think the next phase (of the women’s record) will be to run under 3 hrs 25 min and I think that would be possible. But then everything would have to fall into place on the day to succeed. Likely I would need to hang back a bit earlier to be as strong as possible climbing Constantia Nek and then run at tempo pace for the final 10km.

“But the strength of the women’s field is only going in one direction, and I think I will always have to go out hard (with the leading runners) to give me my best chance of winning. And that may count against going for my fastest time.”

Could Steyn conceive of reaching ten wins?

“We were unfortunate to miss two years during COVID – I might have been closer to ten by now!  But when I won my first Two Oceans, I never envisaged winning ten – so I take it year by year.,” Steyn continued.

“I’m a bit older now (Steyn turned 36 last month) and don’t know how long I can perform at the highest level. But I felt pretty good today and feel I still have a few more years in me. So if the seven becomes eight and the eight becomes ten, then who knows?”  

The first half of the race featured a significant break which saw ultra-marathon debutant, Zimbabwean Blessing Waison and Lesotho’s Tsepo Ramashamole race through halfway at the start of the Chapman’s Peak climb in 1:34:06, 2 min 14 sec clear of the large chasing pack.

When the gap had grown to almost three minutes approaching Hout Bay and was still over two minutes as the two leaders passed the standard marathon mark in 2:23:07, commentators were speculating on the first breakaway win at Two Oceans in many years.

Surprisingly it was the more favoured Lesotho athlete who was first to concede, dropping back on the long climb to Constantia Nek, and when a speedy trio of Seutloali, Khonkhobe and Jantjies had closed to just a minute behind Waison at the top of the climb 10km from home, the pending ‘catch’ looked certain.

It came 49km into the race, shortly before the athletes reached Kirstenbosch top gate from where Khonkhobe led into the fast descent, opening what appeared to be a winning gap on his rivals.

But while Seutloali and Waison fell out of contention, Jantjies fought back, overtaking the diminutive Nedbank athlete shortly before the 52km mark and opening a decisive lead on ‘Chet’s Hill’ on the final stretch towards home before racing to a remarkable victory.

Waison fought to the end to clinch an impressive third position behind Khonkhobe.

Despite Steyn’s fast start, it was Kenyan athlete, Rholux Jelimo Kogo, who held the early lead in the women’s race before Steyn led a five-strong pack which draw level with Kogo 25km into the race.

Tshuma pushed the pace through halfway with Steyn, Jepchumba and Ethiopian Bize Negasa on her shoulder at the start of the climb up Chapman’s Peak.

The quartet remained together for much of the climb until a Steyn surge in the final kilometre to the top of ‘Chappies’ saw Tshuma and Negasa fall behind.

But 45-year-old winner of last year’s Soweto Marathon, Jepchumba, stayed with Steyn over Chappies and through to the standard marathon mark, which the pair reached in 2:34:34, before being forced to slow her pace as the long climb up Constantia Nek began to bite.

While most of the male runners were grimacing on the steep climb, Steyn was smiling as she drew further away from her rivals, before cresting the Nek in 2:51:49 and racing clear to a 6-minute victory over Jepchumba.

Results: Totalsport Two Oceans Marathon 56km

Men

Women

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