TRAIL
by Hans van der Veen and Marius Hugo Schlechter , in just the third race to feature two debut Dream Miles .
The next step up came in March 1987 , when Fourie set his SA Record 3:50.82 and led a total of six men under four minutes in Port Elizabeth . He was followed over the line by Victor Radebe ( debut Dream Mile ), Brummer , Monde Tutani , Henning Gericke and Jacques van Rensburg . A second race with six Dream Miles followed in 1988 , again in Port Elizabeth , but it was the showdown in Stellenbosch in February 1996 that stands out , with seven athletes breaking four minutes , including six South Africans , of which five posted their first Dream Miles ! The race was won by Johan Botha in 3:57.00 , and he was followed over the line by Hezekiel Sepeng , Marius van Heerden , Jean Verster , Manson du Toit and Kobie van der Westhuizen . Verster was the only one who had run a Dream Mile before .
Increasing Tally
By the end of the 1970s , SA had 13 Dream Milers . In the 1980s , a further 19 South African athletes broke the four-minute barrier , bringing the total to 32 ( and Fourie clocked the country ’ s 100th Dream Mile in February 1984 ), with another 18 doing so in the 1990s to bring the total to 50 , including Johan Landsman posting the country ’ s 200th Dream Mile in April 1994 when he finished second in a race in Port Elizabeth . That race was won by Whaddon Niewoudt – the country ’ s 199th sub-four – with Landsman , Fourie and Scott Harris ( debut sub-four ) next over the line , to take the country ’ s tall to 202 Dream Miles .
Getting back to the 50th Dream Miler , there is some ( minor ) dispute about which sub-four to count for Clyde Colenso . Whilst studying and competing in the USA , he ran his first one in 1998 , clocking 3:59.8 during a medley relay event , and his next three , all run in 1999 , were run on shorter , banked indoor tracks ,
Johan Landsman
Johan Fourie Dream Milers Deon Brummer , Henning Gericke and Johan Fourie so some statisticians do not count these times as his true first , whereas his 3:58.49 of May 2000 was a true Dream Mile on an outdoor track . Whichever time you choose to recognise , he was definitely the 50th South African to run a Dream Mile .
However , since then , the number of new SA Dream Milers has dwindled considerably . Just four more athletes ran a sub-four from 2000 to 2009 , and just six from 2010 to 2019 . In this period , Johan Cronje set the current SA Record in June 2014 , clocking 3:50.70 in Eugene in the USA , and finally beating the 27-year-old mark of 3:50.82 that Fourie had clocked in March 1987 !
The current decade has already seen five newcomers to the SA list , with Ashley Smith and Maxime Chaumeton clocking sub-fours in 2021 , followed by Dais Malebane and Christopher Swart in 2022 and Nkosinathi Sibiya in 2023 . We also saw the country ’ s 250 Dream Mile when George Kusche ran 3:57.74 ( indoors ) in the USA in March 2021 , and Ryan Mphahlele ’ s 3:54.48 in Dublin in July 2023 was the country ’ s 258th and most recent Dream Mile . ( Note : This total includes that medley relay sub-four clocked by Colenso in 1998 .)
Global Ranking
Today , South Africa can lay claim to a total of 66 sub-four milers , and this puts the country somewhere near the top five or six on the global rankings list of countries with the most Dream Milers . Unfortunately , at the time of writing , the latest available version of the international Sub-4 Register maintained by Bob Phillips , editor of the quarterly journal Track Stats , was the June 2022 version , which listed the following top 10 countries : 1 . USA 638 2 Great Britain 233 3 . Kenya 154
Ashley Smith and Maxime Chaumeton
4 . Australia 73 5 . Canada 63 6 . South Africa 62 7 . Republic of Ireland 48 8 . New Zealand 43 9 . Morocco 37 10 . Germany 36
Man versus Mountain
While it may appear that modern athletes are not as good as those of the 1970s , 80s and 90s , when far more athletes were breaking through the four-minute barrier , it must be remembered that the mile was regularly raced at track meets in former years , but nowadays is seldom included in meet programmes , with the standard metric and Olympic distance 1500m being far more commonly raced . Since 1976 , the mile has been the only non-metric distance recognised by the IAAF / World Athletics for record purposes , but mile races are more of a special feature now . That said , they still generate huge excitement amongst spectators , because witnessing a Dream Mile live has become a rarity .
The privilege of watching an athlete circle the track four times in less than four minutes is emphahsised when you look at another statistic , which goes back to that belief of the early 1950s that both Everest and the sub-four mile were unbreakable barriers . Since both were achieved for the first time , many other climbers and athletes went on to do likewise , but whereas the current tally of successful Everest summits stands at 6664 – as at December 2023 , according to The Himalayan Database – the total number of Dream miles is still below 2000 ( working off that June 2022 total ).
Granted , if the mile was still a standard event at the Olympics , World Champs , Commonwealth Games and international meets , there would be far more mile events on track meet programmes all around the world , in which case the pundits reckon the tally of Dream Milers would be triple that number , but that ’ s not the case . So perhaps it actually is more difficult run a Dream Mile than to climb the highest mountain in the world !
Ed ’ s Note : This article was written with the kind assistance of renowned statistician Riël Hauman , who supplied a full register of all South African Dream Miles in an excel document that allowed sorting in various formats for incredible statistical analysis . Riël is not just a contributor to the magazine , but an invaluable source of information , and his input and assistance is always hugely appreciated !
Ryan Mpahlele
Images : Hoffie Hoffmeister / Athletics History , David Papenfus / Endurocad , Pexels & courtesy Johan Fourie , Ryan Mphahlele
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