Athletics
Madiba Marathon Magic in Cape Town
Sunday’s Nelson Mandela Marathon offers up an exciting new development in distance running in Africa, building on the recent award to Cape Town of Abbott Marathon Major status and built on the vision and words of Nelson Mandela.
“Sport can create hope where once there was only despair” are the words of the great man and this weekend’s foot race, which takes place in and around Cape Town’s city centre, provides a tangible dimension to his vision and one set to achieve a global proportions within the next year.
Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years and spent 18 of the 27 years on Robben Island, visible from the very coastline this marathon runs along.
The Nelson Mandela Marathon celebrates that Mandela ran on the island. In his cell. Every morning, he ran.
The race follows a route shaped by the full weight of that story. Along the Cape Town coastline, through areas marked by the history of slavery, with Robben Island always in sight.
Every kilometre carries a memory, a struggle, a turning point. Thousands of runners carrying just one number on their chests – 46664, Mandela’s prison number – will follow on a powerful journey through the heart of Cape Town, starting at the Grand Parade before passing through District Six, Parliament and the Company’s Garden, and continuing into Bo-Kaap.
From there, runners will head towards Sea Point, returning through the Green Point precinct before following the FW de Klerk Boulevard to Milnerton and looping back to the finish on Darling Street.
The marathon is the flagship of another top weekend of distance running in the Mother City and will be run in parallel with one of Cape Town’s most popular road races – the Slave Route Half Marathon. And it has attracted legends of the sport to the city.
Paul Tergat, Catherine Ndereba, Hendrick Ramaala and Prudence Sekgodiso – three past legends and one current champion of the sport – are excited about their role as ambassadors and mentors to the next generation of distance running greats.
“I’m very excited to be back in Cape Town, a city which holds many good memories,” said five times World Cross Country Champion, Tergat, one of the most accomplished and comprehensive long-distance runners of all time. Tergat now serves as an IOC Council Member for Kenya.
“I think back to 1996 when I won the World Cross Country Championships at Stellenbosch and met Nelson Mandela for the only time in my life. Coming back as an ambassador for the Nelson Mandela Marathon is very exciting.
“Nelson Mandela is a legend – I’m proud to be a part of this. He embraced equality for all – to give everyone an opportunity to realise their dreams in any sector of their lives.”
In 1994 Catherine Ndereba was recruited into the athletics’ programme of the Kenyan Prisons Service and has risen to her country’s Assistant Commissioner General of Prisons.
Many have rated Ndereba as the greatest women’s marathoner of all time. Between 2003 and 2008, she finished in the top two in five successive global championship marathons, twice winning the World Championship Marathon and setting a women’s marathon world record of 2:18:47 in Chicago in 2001.
“I remember well that day in Chicago,” Ndereba recalled. “It was on the 1st of October 2001, just a couple of weeks after 911. At one stage it looked as if the race might not happen, but in the end the race went so well.
“I had set my sights on breaking the world record, but a week before Naoko Takahashi of Japan became the first woman to break the 2:20 mark at the Berlin Marathon (2:19:46). I told myself that did not matter and that I was going to do it again. And I did!
“As I hit the tape, it meant the world – a reward for all the work I’d been doing. By God’s grace the weather was perfect and everything went according to plan.
“The Nelson Mandela Marathon – oh my goodness! We are coming to this race – a legacy of someone who loved his nation and had hope for the future. I’m also here to pass on motivation to the new generation of runners so they can achieve their dreams as I achieved mine.”
Hendrick Ramaala is a law graduate from the University of the Witwatersrand and one of the most successful South African distance athletes, setting national records over 5000m and 10 000m, winning the 2004 New York City and Mumbai Marathons and achieving two silver medals in the World Half Marathon Championships.
Now a leading coach, he was the marathon coach for the South African team in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
“Paul (Tergat) was a true champion,” remarked Ramaala, who finished just a second behind Tergat at the 2005 New York Marathon. “I always looked up to him for motivation. He was a role model and still is. He had the body and he was born to run. In cross country, he destroyed us and won five times! He raced to world records in 10 000m on the track, in the half marathon and the marathon.
“The Nelson Mandela Marathon is a marathon with a difference. We are not chasing the money – we are trying to run according to Madiba’s values. He taught us values in life and we are trying to encourage the younger generation to live according to his values.
“I hope everyone will come out to watch – this will become a very big event. Cape Town will do a great job on Sunday.”
Many of South Africa’s leading marathoners and ultra-marathoners, including the last two winners of the Two Oceans Marathon, Arthur Jantjies and Lesotho’s Joseph Seutloali, and the 2025 Comrades Marathon winner, Tete Dijana, will line up at the marathon start early on Sunday morning at the Grand Parade.
The marathon starts at 05h30 with sold out Slave Route Challenge 10km, 5km and Half Marathon races starting from the same venue at 06h45, 07h45 and 08h30 respectively.
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