THE WOMEN’ S ULTRA inspiration from the fact she beat Steyn at the Paris Olympics last August?
She finished in 37th place with a time of 2:31:14, a good six places and one minute 36 seconds ahead of Styen. The Olympic Games achievement was massive for Van Zyl as she eventually got a very annoying monkey off her back. Twice she had been to the Olympics to represent South Africa in the marathon, and twice she had failed to finish.
Now that she can finally call herself an Olympian, bet on the amiable athlete from Pretoria to let loose as she seeks to add the coveted Totalsports Two Oceans Marathon title to her myriad achievements on the road. It’ s a tall ask given Steyn’ s incredible showings in the worldfamous Mother City ultra, but sport is fickle at the top, and nothing can be taken for granted on race day.
“ It’ s running and anything is
“ A ONE-TWO WOULD BE GREAT FOR THE CLUB, AND WHO KNOWS, EVEN A CLEAN- SWEEP OF THE PODIUM”
possible. You’ ll remember when they first broke the record, it was Irvette who essentially made that record because she pushed and dropped Gerda going up Constantia Nek. But Irvette hit the wall at the wrong time, and still it took Gerda a massive effort to beat her,” Seidler says.
“ As a club, we see this as a mouthwatering contest and we know that it will be every athlete for herself when the gun goes. They are committed elite athletes and when they race each other it’ s always healthy and great. We wouldn’ t want it to be a case of,‘ Oh, you’ re my teammate, you go win.’ They would not do that. For us, it’ s a case of, if Gerda wins, yay, if Irvette wins, yay.
A one-two would be great for the club, and who knows, even a clean-sweep of the podium could be possible because we also have Carla Molinaro and Loveness Madziva, who did well last year, in our team.”
Of course the possibility of a runner coming from left field – read that to mean Ethiopia or Kenya – cannot be ruled out either. But such is Steyn and Van Zyl’ s quality, their experience, their knowledge of this race and their rivalry that you can bet this is going to be the Gerda versus Irvette race once again. Who gets to win it is anyone’ s guess.
What the running public and all of South Africa will be hoping for is that they dish out a contest as memorable as that one from 2022, when they both smashed a record that was set before Steyn was born and when Van Zyl was just two years old.
Brace yourselves for a race of the ages. Fireworks, as Seidler says.
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