That's Comrades for you
Judged purely on the annual number of entries it attracts and the overall multitude of people it involves, the Comrades Marathon has to be South Africa's largest and most successful sporting event.
Down the years great names have graced this race - from Arthur Newton to colourful characters like the fabled Bill Payne, rugby Springbok and headmaster of Durban High School who, on a dare, ran the race in rugby boots, stopped for breakfast at Drummond E and still made it under the cut-off time.
The name Wally Hayward, who ran his last Comrades at the age of 86, will always be synonymous with the race. It was Hayward who, in the early '50s, gave the race special stature with his string of wins and record-breaking performances.
Then, of course, there's Bruce Fordyce who, with an unprecedented nine victories - how we wished, but it was not to be, that he could make it a "Ten-dyce" - printed his name indelibly on the annals of Comrades. Reeling in the frontrunners as he made his typically determined surge up Polly Shorts, Fordyce virtually made the race his own. It's unlikely that for sheer consistency Comrades will see his like again.
But Comrades, of course - as the race's very name and its traditions underline - is about much more than winning. No slogan better sums up the traditions of the race than that in The Three Musketeers - "All for one, and one for all".
Each year, of course, the Comrades Marathon Association gives the race a special slogan. This year it is "It's Your Race" - and that's exactly what it is. It belongs to each and every one of the thousands who enter. It belongs as much to the runner who crosses the finishing line first at Scottsville race course in this year's "up" run as it does to the competitor who is last across the line in 10:59,59 - just a heartbeat ahead of the sound of the cut-off gun.
There are all sorts of Comrades achievements. Digging into the past, one great consistency that emerged was the case of Johannesburg pharmacist Richard McEvoy, who in Monday's race will be, so to speak, attaining his majority. For McEvoy, this year's Comrades is his 21st run, and since his first race at the age of 21, the 42-year-old Old Eds runner has never finished out of the silver medal class.
That is consistency only one other in the field can match. Louis Harmse, a Vanderbijlpark Spectrum runner in his 50s, will be running his 22nd consecutive Comrades, also never finishing out of the silver medals.
To qualify for silver, you have to finish in less than seven-and-half hours. Richard's times overall are rather better than those of Louis. He finished his first in 6hr 59min in 187th place. His best was in 1986 (6hr 4min) for 26th place; two years later he finished in 6hr 7min but was 25th - one place better. His overall average is 6hr 40min.
"But that's not important," he says. "Louis and I see each other every year and we always have a good joke. We're waiting to see who will blaps (fail) first and finish outside silver."
Richard has branched out into the development of a patented energy supplement in the form of a gel in sachets which, he tells me, is doing very well among athletes - specially long-distance runners.
The father of two daughters - his wife is not a runner ("she thinks I'm crazy; says one lunatic in the family's enough") - Richard avers that, like Fordyce, he can't imagine ever giving up the Comrades.
A tall beanpole, he was a late developer at school at King Edwards VII in Johannesburg, and was nicknamed "Squib" for his small build!
His treasured number (double green) is 5198, and among his many memories of the race, one in particular stands out. It was a bet he and fellow-runner Colin Gorman took with Fordyce and his then business manager, John Burgess, for R1 000, that no woman would ever beat them.
"It was Frith van der Merwe's big year," says Richard. "What an incredible run. When we reached Kearsney College she was already long gone! Boy, were we deflated - and each R500 poorer!"
That's Comrades for you.