SPORT MAN
SAYS sport man says by MANFRED SEIDLER
Bridging the Time Gap
With South Africa having a long history of producing world class running talent , recent years have been somewhat disappointing , but with the right decisions and steps , I believe we can get back to a point where our athletes will be mentioned in the same breath as the top runners from other parts of the world .
Recently I saw a post on Facebook congratulating Ethiopian Tadu Nare on her domination of the 2022 Spar Grand Prix . Nare won five of the six races in the series , only being beaten by Namibian Helalia Johannes in the opening leg . Nare posted two times under 32 minutes , with her fastest being 31:50 in Durban in the second leg of the series , and her average time over the series was 32:33 , bearing in mind that two of the races , Johannesburg and Tshwane , are at an altitude of between 1400m and 1600m above sea level , and Mbombela lies at 770m . This year , she also won the Copenhagen Half Marathon in Denmark with a personal best of 1:06:13 , and won the Riyadh Marathon in Saudi Arabia with a time of 2:26:38 .
In comparison , South Africa ’ s best performance over the 10km this year was 31:59 , run by Dominique Scott- Efurd in Charleston , USA , which moved her to third on the all-time SA performers list behind Elana Meyer and Colleen De Reuck . Tayla Kavanagh clocked 32:37 in Herzogenaurach , Germany for the second-fastest time in 2022 , while Glenrose Xaba , coming back from injury , is third on the 2022 list with her 32:52 at the Absa RUN YOUR CITY DURBAN 10K race . Last year , Kavanagh ’ s
32:10 in Durban made her the fifth-fastest ever South African , and the second-fastest on South African on SA soil , with only Irvette van Zyl ’ s 32:06 ( Durban , 2018 ) being faster on home soil ( and also putting her fourth on the all-time SA list of performers ).
A glance at the top 100 fastest times in the world this year over 10km by women shows that the fastest time is the World Record 29:14 run by Yalemzerf Yehualaw of Ethiopia , and the 100 th best time is 32:22 . Scott- Efurd ’ s 31:59 ranks her 76th this year , while Kavanagh ’ s 32:37 places her 119th in the world , and Xaba ’ s 32:52 puts her 145 th in the world . Important to note here is that the top two SA times were run internationally , with Scott-Efurd finishing second in the USA while Kavanagh was 37 th in Germany . Both ran their times against international competition , on foreign soil . Efurd is based in the US so it is understandable that her times would be posted away from SA . She also trains in the US with some ‘ heavy hitters ’ in women ’ s running , namely steeplechaser Emma Coburn ( 2017 World Champion , 2016 Olympic bronze medal ) and marathoner Emma Bates ( seventh at the World Championships in 2022 ), and importantly , their training base is in the rarefied air of Boulder , Colorado at 1621m altitude .
Dominique Scott-Efurd was SA ’ s fastest woman over 10km in 2022 , here in action at the adidas Adizero Road to Records in Germany
Ethiopian Tadu Nare dominated the 2022 SPAR Grand Prix series in South Africa
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