Running Mann

There were lots of great supporter signs along the Comrades route but the one below held by this young lady in the Kloof area was my favourite. In fact, it was the only sign I took a picture of during the race. I thanked her and departed with the profound, “Cool daughters run Comrades when they are older!” The sign seemed serendipitous as a short while before I was greeted by Michaela van Niekerk, the daughter half of a Jeppe running pair.

Steven Swarts was convicted of raping one of his female athletes while giving her a “deep tissue massage”. The incident occurred in 2018 and the female athlete was 21 at the time. At his trial Swarts pled guilty to rape and sexual assault.

I (quite literally) caught up with Luc Quevauvilliers, the “man in a can”, along the Comrades route. I’d written about Luc’s exploits after the 2025 event where he ran large sections of the Comrades route dressed up in a Rexona deodorant fancy dress outfit. This year Luc was in for the full canned hunting experience and ran the entire race in his remodelled Rexona outfit with trimmings and improvements for comfort and durability.

Many tears are shed during an ultra marathon. Many tears are shed after an ultra marathon. However, Comrades is the only race that is able to open the waterworks before the starting gun even fires. Dave Williams has been there to hear it all.

This is a guest blog by award winning Swedish journalist Daniel Westergren. The article has been translated from Swedish. The original article can be found here: https://ultramarathon.se/artiklar/comrades-2026-starkaste-faeltet-nagonsin The world’s oldest and largest ultramarathon, the Comrades Marathon in South Africa, takes place for the 99th time on Sunday. The men’s field is the best ever, with 7 of the 10 fastest 100 km runners of all time up against all the best South Africans.

Clear your calendar on Sunday 14 June, the greatest ultra marathon on the planet is about to get the greatest live coverage – and it’s all available completely free worldwide on YouTube. You might have struggled to stay awake during the Avatar sequels but you’ll be riveted to the screen on the best Sunday of the year with 14 hours of uninterrupted Comrades coverage.

I am a well-trained husband. It’s taken the better part of 20 years but I am now mostly domesticated and largely housebroken. My wife Kathy ran the 2007 Down run. I seconded her that year. It was hard work and a stressful job. She got out of running the 2008 Up run (just before doing her long run I should add) by falling pregnant. Kathy ran several more marathons and Two Oceans ultras but never felt the urge to return to Comrades. Kathy ran the 2007 Down run with her father Clive Allen.

It is an open secret that relations between the Cape Town Marathon (CTM) organisers and Athletics South Africa (ASA) / Western Province Athletics (WPA) have deteriorated to the extent that lawyers need to be present at every meeting. Personally, I view a fight between CTM and ASA as a bit like watching Australia and England playing rugby – it a battle of arrogance versus ineptitude and the best you can do is to support the referee.

The Streisand Effect refers to the phenomenon where an attempt to suppress, hide, or censor information ends up drawing far more attention to it instead. The term originates from a 2003 incident involving singer and actress Barbra Streisand, who sued a photographer and website for publishing an aerial photo of her Malibu home. Before the lawsuit, the image had attracted virtually no public interest. After legal action was taken, news of the lawsuit spread widely—and so did the photo.

This article is being updated continually in the build-up to Comrades 2026. The average age of the Comrades class of 2026 is 44.3 – making this the second oldest Comrades field after 2024. The average age of the Comrades runner has steadily increased since 1990 from 35 to over 44 post-Covid. Two noticeable step changes happened. The first was a full year increase from 39 to 40 in 2003 when the cutoff time was permanently increased to 12-hours.