XOLANI Mabhida, Sibusiso Kubheka’s coach, revealed that the runner’s participation in this year’s Comrades Marathon will not be to fight for victory but to learn from it before setting foot in the next one.
Kubheka (27) made a splash in August last year, winning the Chasing 100 100km race in Italy, making history by being the first runner in the world to record a time of 5:59:20 in this race.
In an interview withOf this country on his return to this race, he went public with his call to run in Comrades for the first time in his life.
Of course, this runner from Loskop, Mtshezi, who runs for the Xcel Running Club, will run his first Comrades on Sunday at 5 am, in the up run from Durban to Pietermaritzburg.
This famous 87km race will be run for the 99th time since its inception.
The runner who crosses the finish line will walk away with R925 000 for women and men. The runners-up will receive R464 000, the third will receive R334 000.
“The arrangements we have made with him to prepare for Comrades currently do not allow him to go to this race to fight to win it, but there is another way to run a race of this type to go there and run for practice. Runners such as Tete (Dijana) and Thembu (Bongumusa) in their first run at Comrades finished in the distance because they did not have that pressure to rush to win it.
Therefore, our strategy is that Sibusiso too, as he shows that he will be a champion of the Comrades tomorrow, we think he should start by running to learn this race, get experience of running, especially since he will be running with runners who are more experienced and older than him,” said Mabhida, who has successfully trained the runners including Mthembu who has won the Comrades three times.
“Since there is no race he has run before the Comrades, that has put him in a good position to prepare well for this type of race. Apart from Sibusiso, the other runners I train, Ayanda Ngcobo and Siphesihle Nene from Maxed Elite and Aubrey Nzuza from Arthur Ford, are both ready to compete in Comrades, our preparations are going well so far.”
The province of KwaZulu-Natal was the last in 2018 to have a runner who won the Comrades, with Mthembu winning theup run at a time of 5:26:34.
Last year he was defeated by Dijana in thedown run, and he is the one who defends the title this year. And Piet Wiersma from the Netherlands, was the last to win this race in the up run in 2024, with a time of 5:25:00.