Martin Gillingham road running
The Two Oceans marathon goes ahead in Cape Town on Saturday and features probably the strongest field yet gathered for the elite race.
It contains Comrades champions, such as Vladimir Kotov, Nick Bester and Charl Mattheus, as well as former winners Zithulele Sinqe, Isaac Tshabalala and Vusi Nhlapo. The women’s entries are headed by three-time winner Angelina Sephooa, Maria Bak of Germany and Gwen van Lingen.
But behind the front rank there are genuine concerns for the immediate future of a race that has justifiably marketed itself as one of the most beautiful road races in the world. The problem is the closure of Chapman’s Peak Drive, which has forced more than half of the race to be rerouted through the Constantia Valley instead of following the breathtakingly beautiful road from Noordhoek to Hout Bay and the tough climb up to Constantia Nek. Although the race distance of 56km on the new course is exactly the same, more than half of the route has had to be changed.
Entries for the race are down about 15% on the 9?200 or so athletes who entered last year, and race director Chet Sainsbury admits the new route is a factor. “We’re on to the authorities all the time about when we’ll be able to go back to the old route,” he says. “We’ve been told Chapman’s Peak will be re-opened in December next year, which means we have another year of going over Ou Kaapse Weg.”
The new route, which was run for the first time last year, leaves the traditional course after 25km. It takes the runners up a 6km climb over Ou Kaapse Weg before the sharp drop to Tokai. The uninitiated may find it hard to believe but it is often the sharp downhills rather than the long climbs that lead to a runner’s premature demise in marathons. And nothing is steeper than the 2km descent from Silvermine. “It’s like a mineshaft and often a lot of people’s undoing,” says Sainsbury.