ROAD RUNNING

Stephen has won a remarkable 29 SA Championship titles through the years – 28 as a senior and one as a junior – across all three disciplines in the sport , road , track and cross-country . ( He also earned a number of national titles at student level , while studying at TUT .) His tally of 29 titles makes Stephen South Africa ’ s most successful male athlete of all time , in terms of national titles , and puts him just one behind Elana Meyer ( 30 titles ), but still a ways behind René Kalmer ’ s 40 , on the all-time list of South African athletes , says leading athletics statistician Riël Hauman .

“ Stephen has won at least one national title in every single year from 2008 to 2019 , and in those 12 years he claimed more than one title in nine years ,” says Riël . “ His list of titles therefore includes a number of sought after ‘ doubles .’ On the track he won the 5000m / 10,000m double on three occasions ( 2013 , 2015 and 2016 ), and in 2010 he did a ‘ Sifan Hassan ’ by winning both the 1500m and 10,000m titles . On the road , he won the 10km / 21.1km double in 2009 , and in 2018 he won both the half marathon and marathon titles .

“ However , it is when you add his track , road and cross country titles together that you see just how versatile Stephen is . He managed the 10,000m / 10km double on three occasions ( 2009 , 2010 and 2015 ), and he has won three national titles in a year on five different occasions – 2009 , 2013 , 2015 , 2016 and 2018 – with 2018 including the noteworthy ‘ treble ’ of the 10,000m , half marathon and marathon titles . However , 2010 stands out from the other years , as he completed an unprecedented haul of four titles , winning the 1500m and 10,000m on the track , the 10km on road and the 12km in cross country !”

Stephen wins the 2018 Sanlam Cape Town Marathon and SA Marathon Championship title

that considers Hendrick his role model and a mentor . In 2015 , Stephen Mokoka had set an aided best of 1:00:40 in South Shields , and a legal best of 1:00:47 in Copenhagen , Denmark , and the closest he had come to that since then was 1:00:56 , run in Port Elizabeth in July 2019 . But just four weeks later he obliterated that PB with a record-legal 59:51 in Buenos Aires , Argentina , thus becoming SA ’ s second sub-60 runner , and first legal one , thus improving the SA Record by a

massive 16 seconds . And more was to follow .

The 2020 World Half Marathon Champs were supposed to have taken place in Gdynia , Poland on 29 March , and early in the year , Athletics South Africa ( ASA ) announced that it would be sending a strong team of men and women to Poland , headed up by SA Record Holder Stephen , who had also finished fifth in the World Championships marathon in Doha , Qatar last October . It would be the 35-year-old ’ s seventh appearance at the World Half Marathon Championships , a tally bettered by just two other men in the history of the event .

However , the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic and global bans on travel and sporting events saw the event postponed until October – and even then , nobody was actually sure it would still be held this year . Closer to the time , and with Europe seemingly having gotten the pandemic under control , it was announced that the event would go ahead , but with ASA having decided to keep the entire sport in lockdown at least until the end of 2020 , there was no talk of sending an SA team . However , some of the athletes still wanted to go , even if it meant going without financial support from ASA .

“ Representing your country is always awesome , because it means you are amongst the best in the country ’ whole population , and that is an amazing feeling ,” says Stephen . “ You train for so long to get to that level , so being shortlisted for a national team and then being told you have made the team to represent

STEPHEN ’ S NATIONAL TITLES

Track Year ( s ) won 1500m 2010 5000m 2013 , 2015 , 2016 10,000m 2009 , 2010 , 2011 , 2012 , 2013 , 2015 ,

2016 , 2018 Total : 12 titles

ALL-TIME WINNERS OF SA TITLES

( Includes titles won at senior and junior level , but not older age-category titles ) 40 René Kalmer 30 Elana Meyer 29 Stephen Mokoka 20 Sonja Laxton 19 Matthews Temane 14 Xolile Yawa 12 Hendrick Ramaala

your country is an amazing feeling . Then you get to go run against the best guys in the world , and Hendrick has proven that it can be done , finishing second at the World Half Marathon Champs , and Josiah , Elana , Caster and Wayde , too ,” says Stephen .

“ It is always amazing to wear the colours of your country , but when the federation announced it was not sending a team , my manager appealed to them to enter us , if we could pay our own way . Besides national pride and wanting to run for South Africa again , we were motivated by earning World Athletics label status for next year ,” explains Stephen . “ We knew a lot of athletes would not be in the best shape , due to COVID interrupting their 2020 plans , whereas we had confidence in our training , so we went there to see how well we could do . In the end it was not as expensive as we expected .”

Winning a fourth consecutive SA Half Marathon Champs title in 2019

That saw Stephen heading to Poland , along with countrymen Lesiba Precious Mashele and Collen Mulaudzi , as well as countrywoman Glenrose Xaba , and it turned out to be a fantastically successful trip , with all four setting new personal bests , in spite of the challenging conditions and route . Stephen was first South African home in a new SA Record of 59:36 , taking 15 seconds off his own SA Record . Along the way , he also broke two other SA Record marks , as the organisers provided electronic timing at various intermediate points . That saw him improve his own SA Record for 15km , set in the World Half Marathon Champs in Cardiff in 2016 , lowering the mark from 42:44 to 42:18 , as well as clock 56:34 at 20km to beat Hendrick Ramaala ’ s 1998 mark of 57:46 . This means that Stephen currently holds the SA records for 10km ,

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