Standing on the soon-to-be-named Nelson Mandela bridge on the Saturday before the race, I was approached by a tastefully dressed young woman who, when she spoke, was quite obviously several olives short of a Martini. She was, she said, there to meet Princess Anne, who would be present for the opening of the bridge the next day.
If ever an event needed the kind of organisation that comes with royalty, it was this race. They came in their tens of thousands to honour the great man at his only public appearance for his 85th birthday weekend and, helped by organisation that bordered on incompetent at times, repaid him with some of the worst behaviour seen at an event.
Insufficient crowd control at the start-line could not stem the human tide and the race started itself, ahead of time.
Much was made of the presence of the South African marathon team (Olympic gold medallist Josia Thugwane, Ian Syster, Gert Thys and world half-marathon silver medallist Hendrik Ramaala) before the race, but not much was done about their needs before the chaotic start.
Both Thys and Ramaala were happy to have escaped their experience with their lives. ‘I was lucky I didn’t break my leg; the marshals and police would not let us through the field to start in the front, where we should have,†Ramaala fumed.
‘Thugwane was almost crushed against the security fencing. He is a little guy and you can’t really see him. And how can they expect me to race when I am starting at the back with the joggers and old ladies?â€
Atlanta Olympian Thys was even less complimentary with his comments. ‘I nearly had a punch-up with an official, we got treated like pigs. Politicians should not meddle in athletics, why was that fence there in the first place?
‘We do not get this kind of treatment when we race overseas.â€
With a R175 000 first prize up for grabs, the stakes were always going to be high. The elite band of invited runners were mostly caught in the start-line melee and it was Moroccan Jaouad Gharib who seized the opportunity and surged into the lead. The 33-year-old survived several scary moments as the notoriously undisciplined inner-city traffic tried its damndest to spoil the race.
With the finish line almost in sight, Gharib was caught by Kenyan Yusuf Songoka and the whole race came down to a sprint, with the Moroccan edging ahead by four seconds. Elana Meyer, this country’s finest half-marathon runner, was given a running lesson she will remember by Russian Galina Alexsandrova, who broke away after the 10km mark to win in 73:40.
The organisers’ list of mistakes continued long after the race was run: the T-shirt collection point was situated in a corner that could not handle the congestion. It wasn’t long before the crowd’s muttering became a roar and they stormed the area.
The Metro Police and the South African Police Service were called in without much success. The rumbling continued until pepper spray was used to push the crowd back and give the officials time to restore the fences.
As if their litany of cock-ups weren’t enough, the course was laid out so that the 10km and 21km would cross each other in the latter part of the race — a mistake even local fun-run organisers don’t make.
They even managed to get the distance of the street mile all wrong, with athletes covering only 1 000m of the 1 600m race. It was a sad way to end a day that should have been a memorable birthday party.