Being Africa’s only World Athletics gold label marathon on the continent, the Cape Town Marathon had to get innovative in order for the event to take place. With Covid19 taking over the World and events being cancelled, Cape Town stepped up to hold an elites only invitational race but with a twist. 

Run in 3 separate city’s, different athletes were hosted in each marathon, with coastal athletes all competing in Cape Town, and athletes living at altitude being split into two groups, with one in Pretoria and the other in Potchefstroom.  
To make the process fair, Dr Ross Tucker formulated an altitude adjustment calculator to take into factor the different altitudes of the venues. This made the race interesting as it meant that someone winning in Cape Town could still lose the overall title to someone winning in Pretoria or Potchefstroom, even if the winners of the altitude event ran a slower time. 

This didn’t matter though for Mothibi as in brutal conditions and a very slow course, Mothibi obliterated his previous marathon best to take not only the win in the Potchefstroom event but the overall Cape Town Marathon title to with his 2:16:48. Teammate Peter Muthubi took 3rd in the Potchefstroom event in a time of 2:25:23 and 6th overall

Over in Pretoria, teammate Phillimon Mathiba who was running his first marathon since his amazing 2:13 in last years Dublin Marathon ran a strong race in equally tough conditions and a harder course around the Tuks University grounds. Finishing nearly 3 minutes ahead of the 2nd placed finisher, Mathiba crossed the line with his hands in the air in 2:18:29. With the adjustment of time, Mathiba took overall 2nd in the event giving the Nedbank Running club the top 2 spots on the podium. His teammate Chrizell Roberts took 3rd in Pretoria in the ladies’ race in a time of 3:21:59. 

Below are the top 10 results with altitude adjustment times. Nedbank RC athletes highlighted in bold: