Lest I be accused of trolling, I rarely comment on the social media posts of South Africa’s big races. Who needs casual trolling anyway when you can unleash your inner ogre with a 4,000-word rant on your blog? However, I could not resist breaking out from ‘read only’ mode when the below post from Two Oceans Marathon appeared on my Facebook feed.
The phrase that caught my attention was, “The stakes are high: R250,000 for the male and female champions, with an additional R250,000 for anyone who shatters the course record…”.
Now I will freely admit to being prone to hyperbole on occasion – there is a time and place for exaggeration but the Two Ocean post was not it. The propensity to grossly overexaggerate may also be the explanation behind the blatant lying and embellishment in a Two Oceans press release earlier this year which inflated both the running and professional CV of Two Oceans Chairperson Toni Cavanagh.
When you do comment on a post you get notifications when other people subsequently comment. And returning a couple of days later to look at the comments of fellow runners made for a fascinating read – as well as a cautionary tale on how not to run your social media account.
Here’s my breakdown of Two Oceans’ communication breakdown:
The Cover Photo
Graphic design skills are non-existent and basic Photoshopping skills are clearly in short supply. As professional photographer and independent media creator, Chris Hitchcock, observed, “It’s amazing what graphics you can produce with the new version of MS Paint in 2025.”
You need some serious skills to make the normally photogenic Gerda Steyn look like a slightly slimmed down version of Kobus Wiese on her way to an Indigo Girls concert.
The ‘artist’ was skilful enough to tie in the hashtag #KeepPushing with the chosen picture of 2024 men’s winner Onalenna Khonkhobe – who looks like he’s suffering from a serious bout of constipation and is pushing hard enough to severely rupture his anus.
Glaring Omissions
The Facebook post itself was essentially a link to a press release on the Two Oceans website announcing the “Top Contenders” in the ultra marathon for the 2025 event. The release itself looks suspiciously like a cut and paste job with a sprinkle of minor edits from the 2024 race.
Reigning women’s champion and record holder, Gerda Steyn, took time out of her training schedule to make a comment noting a couple of additional female contenders who were strangely omitted.
Replying to Steyn’s comment, freelance journalist Thate Msimango (a man who knows his running and runners better than most), pointed out that Jenet Mbhele had announced the week before that she was injured and would not be running. Two Oceans obviously missed that snippet as Mbhele was still listed in the handful of female contenders.
I asked Msimago who he would add to the men’s contender list and he replied with the names of Flavio Sehohle and Lekhotla Pulenyane (the latter who recently won the Capital City Marathon in 2:18).
READ MORE: ‘I’m not 100 percent fit’ – Jenet Mbhele parts ways with Xcel and is out of Two Oceans
Media Relations
One of the first comments that I noted was from Garrin Lambley, Head of Content at The South African online newspaper and the holder of a light Blue Number (having completed 10 Two Oceans half marathons despite his genetic predisposition to eat bucketloads of ice-cream).
Lambley does deserve some kudos, he achieved what even Gerda couldn’t – elicit a elusive response from the Two Oceans admin. There are 66 comments on the post and Lambley was the only person that the Two Oceans admin deemed worthy of a response.
After pointing out that the press release link that they’d initially shared was broken, Lambley politely suggested that it would be helpful if they checked their emails.
“Hi Garrin, have you checked your spam and junk mails – subsequent to your last enquiry, we were able to ascertain that we had answered all your mails.” was the highfalutin response. Lambley quickly followed up with another comment “Please resend emails. Nothing in Spam folder.”
Two days passed and Lambley lamented, “Still waiting Two Oceans Marathon …”. The replies must be roaming around like lost sheep in the ethernet.
If bonafide members of the mainstream media are not able to get their emails answered then what chance do the rest of us have?
Shouting until you’re Quadruple Blue in the face
Another person who I would have expected to have had a good chance of eliciting a response and the attention of Two Oceans would be Ian Benson, who is running his 40th Two Oceans ultra this year (and will become just the 12th person to earn a quadruple Blue Number).
Nope.
Benson has sent a series of emails to race manager Hilton Kearns and the Two Oceans team asking basic questions about rudimentary information that is not available on the web site like cutoff times and what happens if someone wants to downgrade their seeding to run with a friend. Benson is a Pirates Road Running stalwart. The questions are not even for Benson’s own benefit, Pirates are one of the largest clubs represented in the Two Oceans starting lineup and Benson is giving an Oceans talk to over a hundred aspirant runners this Tuesday.
I picked up on this comment and made contact with Benson because, even if Two Oceans ignores their legends, I’d like to write an article on him and his memories of four decades of running Two Oceans. We ran a 10 km together this Saturday morning and I interviewed him afterwards. He is not worried about completing his 40th run next Saturday, he is worried that there won’t be a quadruple Blue Number badge waiting for him at the finish.
Norrie Williamson jumped in with a press release of his own in a reply to Benson’s message. The short of it is he points out that, “It truly appears that people who suggest ideas / improvements or alternatives are considered a threat to the REGIME.” This is consistent with my experience of the Two Oceans Board and staff.
Funnily enough this came up in the discussion I had with Benson. In most years there are long, snaking queues out the door of the expo and it takes several hours for runners to collect their race numbers. Two Oceans have unwaveringly and belligerently avoided copying the approach taken by the Cape Town Cycle Tour whose 30,000 entrants can get their race numbers in minutes.
One year when the expo was at the Cape Town Convention Centre, Benson spotted race manager Kearns and another Two Oceans official chatting away, oblivious to the plight of runners frying in the sun in a queue longer than it would take most to run the half marathon. Benson asked Kearns to come with him so he could “show him something”, to which Kearns replied, “I’m busy.” Benson pointed out that he was idling around and chatting. Kearns conceded the point and followed Benson to the registration area. After Benson pointed out several ‘obvious to the naked eye’ inefficient steps in the registration process that, if addressed, would shave minutes off the process, Kearns shrugged his shoulders and said, “What does it matter to you, you’ve got a Blue Number and can skip the queues.”
Cutoffs & Seedings
Some of the answers Benson was looking to share with his Pirates clubmates were around seedings and cutoffs. As you can see from the series and comments below, these are very common questions.
READ MORE: Blue Number Bummer (Two Oceans downgrades their loyalty program)
No doubt Two Oceans will use the excuse that “We have been inundated with queries which is why we haven’t been able to respond to them all.” Here’s an idea geniuses, why don’t you make this information freely available on your website and send out proper communications so that you don’t get inundated with the same question hundreds of times?
As for those eagerly awaiting the announcement of in-race cutoffs, don’t hold your breath. Last year, they only added the cutoff times to the digimag after the race was completed so perhaps they are planning the same for 2025.
READ MORE: Two Oceans caught out in their own digimag lie
Zero Rate Inflation on Prize Money
Another consistent comment was that the R250,000 prize money was nothing to brag about as it has been exactly the same since 2010 (and possibly before that, I can’t confirm the exact date with Two Oceans as they don’t bother to reply).
Two Ocean’s own website under the history section for the 2011 event notes, “George Ntshiliza became the first South African ultra winner since 2007, when he sprinted to the closest finish in years and a cheque for R250 000.”
If the prize money had followed a purely inflationary trend, the first prize for the 2025 event would be R519,750. Or if we worked out the equation backwards, R250,000 today is the equivalent of R115,000 in 2010.
Sadly seagulls and vermin flock to rubbish dumps, tier one sponsors don’t.
Don’t Click on a Spam Turd
Spam is an unfortunate reality on social media – even hackjob bloggers have to install software and moderate comments such is the pervasiveness of this dog turd like contamination.
It’s irritating when someone else’s dog plonks a big poo on your front lawn but you still need to pick it up or your home will stink – and someone is liable to step in them (or click on them when they lead to bogus ‘livestream’ Facebook groups presumably setup to conduct some kind of fraud).
Two Oceans followers should tread very carefully – their posts are continually being hit by a wolf pack poopocalypse.
Thriving in Ambiguity
One final point to pick up on is the ambiguity of the wording itself. Beverly Fuller also picked up on the “shatters” hyperbole but focussed on what happens if more than one person beats the old record like in 2022 when winner Gerda Steyn and second placed Irvette van Zyl both ran faster than Frith van der Merwe’s former record – do they both get the incentive?
The way that it’s currently worded would imply that anyone who breaks the current “course record” can expect a R250,000 windfall courtesy of Totalsports. That’s a written contract in my book.
We should also point out that the “course record” and “race record” would be two different things. Assuming that we run over Chapman’s Peak in 2025, they are the same for the women’s race (Steyn’s 3:26:54 in 2024). However, for the men the “race record” is 3:03:44 by Thompson Magawana in 1988 which had a Brookside finish at Villagers in Claremont. The best time for a Chapman’s Peak routing with a UCT finish is 3:05:39 which was set by Marko Mambo in 2005 – this would be the “course record”.
I doubt that Totalsports are expecting to dish out R250,000 cheques like Oprah in a generous mood but, should that scenario occur, I know a good lawyer if anyone needs one…
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Sad reality is that Tow Oceans has lost its touch, have run 9 consecutive ultra marathons and sent numerous correspondence to them, to no avail. Guess we just become numbers, as athletes and have no voice …..
You’ve left out that the 2 Oceans website is really not that user friendly on mobile devices, which is crazy as a lot of runners don’t have laptops/computers. The entry price is exorbitant for the half marathon… Think it was R670 with the t-shirt. And the football game lottery type entry system is a pain!
I think the paragraph which contained the phrase about ‘Shattering the course record and all the other grandiose statements was probably written by artificial intelligence. No human would be daft enough to write that junk.
See you all at Chatsworth! Stuart come and join us in KZN.
Sad to add that no One at 2-Oceans answers their phone calls the whole day. If you are busy, then place a voice note/Tracker. I’m Happy to hear that I’m no. 20 in the Queue. Surely they do realise that, we from out óf town, whom invest in the City, are equally an important part óf this race? Maybe not?
Still awaiting a reply to my Email.
Hi there – registered yesterday 2nd – what a poor set-up – confusion for expo vendors – athletes walking through expo to get to registration so vendors lost out on business – the venue is dark/uninviting – Totalsports main sponsor have a poor set-up – only shoes – no retail/clothing??? Outside no signage to direct athletes to where registration was – and the worst goodie bag in all my 40years of running – one silly underarm deo! thats it ??? Clearly no drive from TOM to engage suppliers/sponsors to mkt their products/offerings in the bag?? Opportunity missed by a mile! As usual the race and supporters will make it worthwhile!
You mention Chet Sainsbury and Ian Benson going for his 40th medal in one article.
Many years ago, we had a top runner, Dolf Dampies (14th in Comrades 1982), who progressed to 9 TOM medals. After a while Chet contacted his club to enquire if/when is Dolf going to enter and get his permanent number, as the closing date approached rapidly.
Chet was such a stickler for tradition and the history of the race, that everyone who knew Chet would know that in the case of someone going for the 40th medal, a personal letter would have been the minimum Chet or Annemarie would do.
Thank you for exposing this TOM Saga – How very sad that it has gotten to this point – of potential collapse – so synonymous with much else in RSA right now- a “pot-holed” event at a time when we need all the good and positive news we can get.