All Time Fastest Up Times & Pace
The tables below show the all-time Comrades Up run pace and time charts. I place more emphasis on pace (especially as we had the shortest ever Comrades distance this year).
Piet Wiersma and Dan Moselakwe both crack the Top 10 whilst Degefa Lafebo secures 15th. Joseph Manyedi and Andrew Davies also make it into the Top 30. Whilst 2024 sees the most finishers (5) in the Top 30, I’d still make a case for the 2000 being the most competitive men’s Up run of all time followed by 1998.
The SuperSport commentators observed that Europeans tend to perform better than South Africans on the Up run. The stats certainly support this sentiment with the top of the table being dominated by overseas visitors with the notable exception of Bruce Fordyce. It’s easy to forget how good Fordyce was in his day but quite incredibly he still retains 4th fastest pace and has 3 entries in the Top 10. 5 of his 6 Up run victories feature in the Top 30 (only his 1990 win is missing).
The much shorter distance (about 1.4km off the ‘normal’ distance) means that there are far more entries from the class of 2024 on the overall finish time list. I don’t like to see course records broken on ‘shortest ever’ routes but it would have been good to have the drug tainted record of Leonid Shvetsov replaced at the top. Just 11 seconds would have provided the cleanse.
The first 4 all make it into the Top 10, Andrew Davies is 12th and Bongmusa Mthembu just earns his second entry on this list in 29th.
The next tables tables show the Top 10 fastest ever men’s times for each Gold medal by finish time and pace with the right of each table shows how many Top 10, 5, 3 and fastest times there are per year.
All 10 Gold medallists make it onto the pace list with champion Piet Wiersma performing ‘worst’ with the 7th fastest Up run winning pace. Everyone else ‘podiums’ for their respective positions with 4th place Joseph Manyedi and 5th place Andrew Davies topping the charts.
Looking at medal by year, some vintages are clearly better than others (although some may have had a generous amount of “anti-freeze” added to provide more body to the juice). The only other years who still have 10 out of 10 medallists on the chart are during the ‘chemical era’ 1996, 1998 and 2000.
However, what is quite incredible is that the second longest Up run ever of 89.7km in 1981 (the longest was 90.4km in 1972) still has 9 entries of the best pace by position table. This suggests that, whilst reductions in distance tend to have a major impact on the number of Wally Hayward and Silver medals earned, they have less impact on the Gold medal pace. My hypothesis is that the race days tactics of the leading bunch up to Polly Shortts have a much bigger impact.
With the shortest ever Comrades distance, the time list is naturally more impressive with the Wiersma’s win sitting in second by 11 seconds and positions 2 – 10 all being the fastest ever for the class of 2024.
What Went Down on the Men’s Up Run?
How the men’s elite field pace themselves before halfway is important but who is leading at halfway is not. Therefore, I’ll start the analysis at Drummond. At this stage Beresnev is about 8m30 ahead of Piet Wiersma and the chasing bunch. The chasing bunch consists of 53 runners (which is by far the biggest I’ve ever seen at Drummond) and 7 of the Golds will come from this group. Interestingly, the other 3 Golds all come from internationals (Davies, Milne and Olsson) who are all in various groups further behind.
Between the chasing group and Beresnev there are 4 other runners – 2 Russians and 2 South Africans but they are irrelevant to the rest of this story. However, special mention must go to Nikolay Volkov who gets well and truly Volkoved up by Inchanga and the second half of Comrades and ends up finishing in 4923rd place with a 9h32.
At Cato Ridge (29.3km to go), Beresnev still has a lead of just under 6 minutes but all the other pretenders have disappeared. The massive chasing group has disintegrated and is now just 9 runners including 6 eventual Golds. Perhaps the surprise in this group is the 42-year-old David Gatebe (former holder of the Down record which was broken in 2023 by Tete Dijana). However, Comrades has no respect for reputations or former glories. Gatebe holds on until Polly Shortts but is only able to run the 1797th fastest split in the men’s field (5:27/km) which leaves him in 49th position and 40 seconds outside of a Wally Hayward medal. The lowest placed Gold medallist at this stage is Swedish runner Elov Olsson who is in 35th position and about 5 minutes behind the chasing group.
The next split to Umlaas Road (17.8km to go) gets one to the highest point on the route and involves some climbing but far less than on previous splits. The hills here are far worse than anything one would encounter on a marathon major but do not even get the distinction of a name on the tortuous Comrades route.
The 11.5km of nameless hills from Cato Ridge are all that’s needed to send Beresnev into the “also rans” pile. He will eventually finish 11th which is commendable but Comrades proves once again that even extreme introverts shouldn’t run solo in the first two-thirds. This split has sorted out the good from the great. The leading bunch is now just 4 and includes all podium finishers. The 4th wheel is Tete Dijana who bewildered everyone when he stopped for an oil change just after halfway and said after the race that he felt “dizzy”. Dijana was most pundit’s pre-race favourite but would get smoked up Polly Shortts (25s/km slower than Wiersma) and can only manage 5:20/km from there to the finish for a disappointing 14th position.
Olsson has now moved up to 21st much to the excitement of Daniel Westergren, Swedish statistician and fellow ultra marathon enthusiast with whom I was chatting whilst watching the live television coverage. Westergren mentioned that there were 3 elite Swedes all from the same small village of Ockelbo who run for a club called the “Ockelbo Mafia. They eventually finished in 7th, 15th and 21st and he was disappointed when I told him that the team prize required 4 members (of course I did suggest that he run as the 4th member next year).
The Up run is all about Polly Shortts. Unfortunately someone didn’t tell the SuperSport producers this as they keep cutting to inserts as the leading men summit little and big Pollies. Before the race I wondered how Wiersma would handle the uphills. He answered emphatically with a 39 second lead as Polly Shortts is conquered. The next 4 runners, Moselakwe, Lafebo, Manyedi and Davies, who emerge from the most famous hill in South Africa will also finish in that order for the top 5 Golds. Davies, in particular (who is the British marathon record holder for 40+ year olds), slices through the field.
There are just 2 runners who summit Polly Shortts in the top 10 and don’t stay there – Dijana and Beresnev. Elov Olsson is sitting in 12th and still has 5 runners to overtake for his eventual 7th placed finish and Two Oceans champ Givemore Madzinganyama will move from 13th to 10th.
The fastest final split is run by Dan Moselakwe but he can only close the gap by 4 seconds on the first Dutch winner of the Comrades. On the shortest Comrades of all time, Piet Wiersa missed the Up course record by 11 seconds (which is a pity because it would have been nice to see the chemical cloud surrounding the current Up record evaporate). Olsson is 3rd fastest over the final split.
Of note is that just 7 men run the last split faster than women’s winner Gerda Steyn and three other females (Alexandra Morozova, Courtney Olsen and Citriona Jennings) all feature in the top 20 from Mkondeni to the finish. Another final split highlight is the run of Dion Ross from Xcel who finishes in 141st position but runs the 10th fastest time over the final split.
The Gold medal pace by split comparison graph provides a good illustration of race day tactics and where the race was won. The pace steadily accelerates from Winston Park, Cato Ridge to Umlaas Road separates the good from the great and the climb up Polly Shortts to Mkondeni determines the podium positions.
I’ve included a second graph which shows Dijana’s implosion and also includes Edward Mothibi’s winning splits from 2019.
The Gold pace graph from 2019 is also included for comparison (note label says 2017 but this is incorrect). You can see how different the pacing tactics were 5 years ago at the last Up run. The pacing is much more even and the contenders are sorted out much earlier in the race. Most of the 2019 Golds run the last split far slower than in 2024.
In all the Comrades I’ve analysed there have only two Gold men with negative pace and they always finish first and second (and very few, if any, further negative paces are found within the top 100). In 2024 all Gold medallists record a negative split and, whilst fairly rare, there are sporadic negative splits as one goes down the top 100.
Some analysis I’ve done for the first time in 2024 is to look at the fastest and slowest splits of the top 100 and this is telling. Just 6 of the top 100 run their slowest split up Field’s Hill (Pinetown to Winston Park) whilst 84 endure their slowest split up Polly Shortts (Umlaas Road to Mkondeni). As Norrie Williamson says, it’s not about equal pace but about equal effort. The 6 who went up Field’s as their slowest split occupy 6 of the top 7 positions (and all of the top 5).
The fastest split also tells a tale. Whilst no one can claim bragging rights for running their fastest split up Field’s or Pollies, 8 of the top 100 run the first 5.5km and 44 the next split to Pinetown (which includes Cowies and plenty of other climbing) the fastest. None of these earn Gold. All the Gold medals are earned by running Cato Ridge – Umlaas Road the fastest with one exception, Elov Olsson who saves his best for the final split from Mkondeni.
None of the men are able to run a split under 3:15/km (a few will manage this on the Down run on the Pinetown split). Only 9 men are able to run a sub 3:30/km split. All of these occur on the second half and the top 8 Golds go to this group (Dijana is once again the exception). Only two men run two sub 3:30/km splits – Wiersma and Moselakwe who finish first and second. Winning the Comrades Marathon is really quite simple when you look at it on paper.
Fastest Qualifiers
[Below if the ‘prediction post’ I did before Comrades – I’ve updated at the end with what actually happened.]
The table shows the men with the fastest 50 male qualifiers (note: for ultra qualifiers an adjusted marathon time is calculated using an equation giving a ‘distance discount’).
Of note is that just 14 of the fastest 50 have run an Up run before and, of those, only 6 have run an Up run under 6 hours. There are also 22 novices in the fastest 50.
Whilst everyone is giving Tete Dijana the ‘pre-race favourite’ tag, I think Edward Mothibi will give him a good run for his money. At the last Up run in 2019, Mothibi was neck and neck with Bongmusa Mthembu at the bottom of Polly Shortts before pulling away for the win. There are definitely some runners who are better on the Up and it remains to be seen if direction will impact the Dijana-Mothibi rivalry. It will also be very interesting to see whether Piet Wiersma can replicate his amazing 2023 Down run up the hills to Pietermaritzburg.
There is a lot of depth in the men’s field and the Gold medal winners (and overall winner) are much harder to pick than in the ladies race. A Green highlight indicates the names listed in the Comrades “Contenders” news release. I’ve also added Givemore Madzinganyama and Onalenna Khonkhobe, winners of Two Oceans in 2023 and 2024 respectively. Khonkhobe’s Run 4 Cancer 48k time was used as his qualifier but his 3:09:30 Oceans win would place him second on the list with an adjusted time of 2:14:14. Also note that three runners on the Contenders presser Bongmusa Mthembu, Joseph Manyedi and Aleksei Beresnev are outside the top 50 fastest qualifiers.
Here’s what actually happened. The qualifying time is a not nearly as good a way to predict eventual Gold medals as it is for women. Four Golds come from the top 10, 6 from the top 30 and 7 from the top 50. I managed to pick 6 of the top 10. This table is very different from the equivalent women’s table where there is much more consistency.
There were 7 DNFs and just 1 DNS from the fastest 50 qualifiers. The biggest positive jump between ‘seeding’ and finish place for top 50 fastest was Pfarelo Sylvester Mathada (49th fastest / 26th place) whilst Zimbabwean Jonathan Chinyoka has the biggest slip (26th fastest / 13085th place). Bongmusa Mthembu made the biggest jump into Gold medals (113th fastest / 6th place).
Elite Split Performance: The Difference between Good and Great
[Note: As I compare male and female performance this section is included in both articles verbatim.]
The women’s field in 2024 was far stronger than that of 2019 with every split except Winston Park to Drummond being substantially faster for both Gold medallists and the Top 100. There is a wide but fairly consistent gap of 40-50 seconds per kilometre between Golds and the Top 100 which indicates a lack of depth in the women’s field.
The men’s graph is quite different illustrating different race day tactics between 2019 and 2024. In 2019 the lead contender bunches pushed much harder to halfway whereas the racing only really got going from Cato Ridge to Umlaas Road in 2024. The graph also highlights the difference between good and great – the are plenty of men who keep up until Drummond but Inchanga sorts out the medals from the mice.
The next two graphs provide a comparison between the male and female Top 100 and Gold medallists. The larger gap in the Top 100 (compared to Gold) highlights that there is a lot more depth in the men’s field. However, the gap between the average split pace of men and women decreases steadily over the second half for Golds and the Top 100 illustrating the better pacing of female elites.
The table provides source data for the graphs (note I don’t have 5.5km split times for 2019). It also highlights just how tough Polly Shortts is – everyone has this as their slowest split. I was quite surprised at how different the 2019 and 2024 split rankings were (the men’s can be explained by race day tactics but the women’s are also quite jumbled). One thing to note is that whilst Top 100 men have the final split as their slowest, this is the fastest split for Top 100 women.
Gold Medal Demographics
This was the first year since 2016 that South African men have not dominated the medal table. Perhaps an indication that there is resurgence of a more competitive international field.
According to the Americans white men can’t jump and (barring a few notable exceptions) it looks like us melanin challenged South Africans are not that great at ultra running either. The last Gold was Johan Oosthuizen in 2008. All eight this millennium have been won by just three runners Albe Geldenhuys, Sarel Ackermann and Oosthuizen. We are also still waiting for a first Indian to win a men’s Gold.
The graph below shows Gold by region. this was the first year since 2008 when internationals won more Gold than South Africans and the first time since 2015 when South Africans have not won more golds that those from other African countries.
The tables below provide an all time history of Top 10 and Top 3 finishers with additional segmentation by decade.
