DAN PLATO Cape Town Executive Mayor
As Executive Mayor , it gives me great pleasure to welcome back all the participants and visitors to the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon .
The City of Cape Town understands the value of major sporting and entertainment events , which is why much focus has been placed on ensuring we provide an enjoyable and top-notch all-round visitor experience for both locals and visitors .
Cape Town has successfully hosted many world-class and large-scale sporting and entertainment events because we have the necessary skills and infrastructure to do so . As evidence of this hard work , the City of Cape Town and many local businesses have received many prestigious tourism , travel and eventing awards .
The tourism and events industry is one of the major pillars of our City ’ s economy , but like many industries , it has taken a knock due to the global COVID-19 pandemic . It is important that we continue to support and focus on rebuilding the events industry and the many stakeholders involved . We hope to see this industry safely back to full strength as soon as possible , through the ramping up of vaccinations and fully reopening the economy .
The City continues to pledge its support to the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon . We wish the organisers and runners a wonderful and memorable experience .
Let ’ s keep moving forward together .
SANLAM Sydney Mbhele , Chief Executive : Brand
Welcome to all runners
I ’ m so excited to share with you that we ’ re just days away from the eighth Sanlam Cape Town Marathon . What a journey it has been .
The theme this year – Africa is our home , this is our race – rings particularly true for Sanlam . This continent has always been our home and we are committed to empowering its people to live with confidence . That means serving all the communities across the 34 countries we ’ re in to enable Africans to have the best chance of being financially confident , secure and prosperous .
Right from the start Sanlam and the SCTM race organisers shared a vision . A vision to build an iconic African race that could unite people and bring a shared sense of optimism and pride to our beautiful continent . That ’ s why we became the founding and title sponsor of this race eight years ago . We set a goal to elevate this race to compete against the world ’ s best . Now , it ’ s on the verge of becoming the seventh star in the Abbott ’ s constellation of Marathon Majors .
Thank you to our partners for their tireless energy and expertise . Over the past 30 years Sanlam has helped raise over R50 million for CANSA – and our race partners have come alongside us in our commitment to the fight against cancer , allowing us to collectively raise substantial funding for CANSA . We ’ ve also shone a global spotlight on how amazing this country is . Now , in the aftermath of Covid-19 , I hope that events like this will go some way to help our country and economy recover .
Thank you to everyone who makes this race so special . Good luck to all our runners – including those participating virtually .
I have a feeling this year ’ s Sanlam Cape Town Marathon is going to be another special one .
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