Dutchman Piet Wiersma (26) won the 97th Comrades Marathon from Durban to Pietermaritzburg on Sunday.
Wiersma, who came in at 5 hrs 25 min 00 sec, just missed the up-run record of Leonid Shvetsov in 2008 of 5:24:39 by 21 seconds.
On Friday Wiersma said: “I can’t promise that I’ll win, but I promise that I’ll have the race of my life.”
In 2023T Wiersma, a complete unknown stunned everyone when he finished second in the down-run.
Wiersma vowed that he would be back, better prepared than ever before.
Despite being injured for six months and only returning to running this January, Wiersma studied the Comrades route obsessively, and spent six weeks in Kenya training at altitude and doing hill climbs to be in the best possible for shape for Sunday.
Immediately after climbing Polly Shortts, he started cramping and had to dig deep to get over the line.
Wiersma finished more than two minutes ahead of South Africa’s Dan Moselakwe in second place.
“It’s very special. I felt like last year I had some unfinished business, so I felt like today I was able to finish the job,” he said at the finish line.
“It’s too bad that I just missed the course record by a few seconds. I was cramping up a bit in my calves for the last few kilometres after Polly Shortts. I know I could have gone a bit faster, but I didn’t want to get greedy. Getting the win was the big goal for today.”
Asked if he would be back next year to defend his crown, Wiersma said: “Absolutely”.
The women’s race was won by Gerda Steyn who set a new up-run record of 05:44.54. Steyn set the previous 5:58:53 unofficial up-run mark in 2019.
This was her third Comrades win. In 2023 she broke the down-run record time.
She came in just under 20 minutes after the men’s winner.
[Photo: Composite – Instagram & Nedbank Running Club respectively]