With the reliability of a Swiss clock, Gerda Steyn powered to her seventh straight Two Oceans ultra-marathon victory in Cape Town yesterday.
The men’s contest over the 56km route saw the lead changing hands three times in the closing stages before 25-year-old Northern Cape runner Arthur Jantjies, a novice in this event, took the win.
And while the stretch from Hout Bay up to Constantia Nek marked the beginning of the men’s battle, that was where Steyn stamped her authority on the women’s race.
She had been closely marked from the start, with Kenya’s Soweto Marathon champion Margaret Jepchumba, Ethiopian Bize Negasa, Rholex Jelimo Kogo of Kenya and South Africa-based Zimbabwean Nobukhosi Tshuma sticking to her for more than half the race.
It was Jepchumba who stayed the longest, sitting on Steyn’s shoulder as they came off Chapman’s Park. But that’s when the 36-year-old Steyn beamed the famous smile that has endeared her to road-running fans around South Africa, that friendly grin that has signalled doom for so many of her rivals.
Jepchumba, who had outpaced Steyn over 42.2km in Soweto a little more than four months ago, gritted it out until beyond the marathon mark.
Just as there’s only one ocean, the Atlantic, enveloping the Cape Peninsula, there’s only one Gerda Steyn
With 6km to go, Steyn had built up a lead of 2min 17sec and was nearly six minutes in front when she crossed the line in 3:27:43. She may have missed her 3:26:54 best time from 2024, but yesterday was her second-fastest over the course.
And Steyn still had enough energy to turn around at the finish line and run back to greet the crowd, high-fiving them and gesturing her gratitude with a heart shape and a bow.
By comparison, both Jepchumba and third-placed Tshuma were spent at the finish.
Just as there’s only one ocean, the Atlantic, enveloping the Cape Peninsula, there’s only one Gerda Steyn. Imagine what her record on the Peninsula ultra-marathon might have been had the Covid pandemic not forced the cancellation of the 2020 and 2021 editions.
Steyn — who next year will bid to equal the eight straight victories achieved by nine-time champion Bruce Fordyce at the Comrades from 1981-88 — paid tribute to those who had supported her.
“This is the most wonderful feeling to take the win for a seventh time, but I must say it’s a team effort. I’ve got so much support behind me, so much belief in me from an entire country. Today I just ran with gratefulness in my heart.”
If Steyn can claim a fifth Comrades victory in June, she will equal Russian Elena Nurgalieva’s four in a row from 2010 to 2013, the longest consecutive stretch by a woman in that event.
Nurgalieva is the most successful Comrades women’s champion with eight titles.
Jantjies, a two-time winner of the Diamond Marathon in Kimberley, waited patiently before making his move. He hunted with the pack, and when defending champion Khoarahlane Seutloali of Lesotho and Onalenna Khonkhobe attacked towards the end, he went with them.
Seutloali, the men’s Soweto Marathon champion, fell back first, and when Khonkhobe opened up a small lead over Jantjies, it seemed as though the race was over.
But Jantjies wasn’t done, storming through with 4km to go and pushing ahead to cross the line in 3:09:25, 35 seconds in front of the more fancied Khonkhobe.
Jantjies, who trains under John Hamlett, described his win as glorious but insisted it was no surprise. “We were in Dullstroom training for eight weeks; eight weeks that I sacrificed away from my family, away from home. I put the work in, and this was a ‘fun run’, as [my] coach said.”
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