Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 66, January 2015 | Page 18

Ma Living Legend

Born to Run

Born in 1966 in Stellenbosch, Jowaine began running in high school. “I

She Showed Them

Jowaine with husband & coach, Allan

did fairly well, and realised I’m one of those ‘slow-twitch people’ that will
do better at longer distances,” she says. She earned Western Province
colours from 1984 to 1987 as well as Western Province Schools colours
in 1986, which then saw her made the captain of the SA Schools Cross
Country Team under the pre-1994 SACOS council for so-called coloured
sports. Next Jowaine attended college to study teaching, and while there
she made the SA Colleges Cross Country team in 1988 under the SATISA
umbrella, and was again made team captain.

I

In 1989 she married Allan, who had started as a training partner, then

n 1996 the South African athletic authorities selected a team to run in SA colours in
the Comrades Marathon, to take on the growing contingent of international entrants,
but one athlete they overlooked was Jowaine. She had finished second in the Two
Oceans Marathon in 1992, then sixth in both the Two Oceans and Comrades in 1994,
and she added another second at Oceans in 1995, the same year she won the All
Africa Games Marathon title, but her 1995 Comrades had delivered a disappointing
219th position, hence she was not selected.

become her coach and manager, and it was then that Jowaine became motivated to
see how good she really was. “My times were more or less the same as the top white
athletes, but this was all before the merging of racial sporting codes, and things were
very different then. Our SACOS races were often run in the afternoon, separate from
white SARRA events. Even though SARRA races were open to a