THERE is clearly something wrong when both your champions are not available to defend their national title and Athletics South Africa (ASA) are going to have to seriously reconsider the timing of their Marathon Championships.
To be held in Cape Town on Sunday, the ASA Marathon Championships are supposed to be the country’s ultimate 42.195km event with the nation’s best battling it out for honours.
This is a race that marathoners of all ages should strive to be a part of, qualifying as they do via their provincial championships.
But when both your male and female champions opt to skip the event, then you know you are missing something and you’ve got to reconsider, perhaps the timing of it.
It is the inconsistency in terms of when the ASA Marathon Championships happens that robs it of being the country’s ultimate marathon race.
There were times when it was incorporated into the Cape Town Marathon that happens in September/October.
In recent years the championships were part of the Durban International Marathon which happened in April last year.
It has now been moved to this weekend (February 17), incorporated as it is into the Balwin Sport Peninsula Marathon.
It comes way too early in the year, of course, with many athletes only beginning their season and thus no doubt unfit.
Of course, the provincial qualifiers happened last year and runners would have known they were going to participate.
But not this weekend because last year’s road running star Elroy Gelant will not be participating as the defending champion, the Boxer AC stalwart, having raced in Hong Kong just recently.
Ditto for marathon breakout starlet of 2024, Cian Oldknow.
The two were fantastic in being crowned national champions last year and even had super races at the Olympic Games in Paris.
Logic should thus suggest they must be going to Cape Town to try and defend their titles.
It gets even worse because national record holder Glenrose Xaba and the woman whose mark she broke with that scintillating debut run of hers at the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon, Gerda Steyn will also not be racing.
Of course, runners have to qualify for the championships via provincial events and it is up to ASA and their federations to ensure that the best athletes feel compelled to participate.
I know of countries that have denied runners who ran Olympic qualifying times the chance to represent them at the global sports spectacle because they’d not participated in national championships and I believe ASA should consider going this route if their events are to be taken seriously by runners.
Yet for them to be able to do that, they have to seriously find a spot in the calendar that will not only be regular every year but one that is going to be at a time when the runners are at their peak for them to produce their best performances.
A hard task given just how ultra mad South Africa is with the Two Oceans and the Comrades Marathon actually taking the slots that should actually be set aside for the marathon championships – a world and IAAF recognised distance that should be prioritised at all costs over other distances if we are to find ourselves competing with the likes of Kenya and Ethiopia on the international scene.
We have the marathon talent in this country, but it is being killed by the undue pressure placed on young athletes to rush into running ultra marathons.
ASA needs to be a much stronger mother body to bring about a change that will see the ASA Marathon Championships being an event every runner aspires to be a part of.
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