Comrades 2025: Startline Stats

NOTE: I will be adding additional statistics to this article on a daily basis up to the Sunday 8 June.

Average Age

The average age of the class of 2025 is 44.5 – exactly the same as in 2024. Therefore, this is the joint oldest group of starters at any Comrades Marathon where age records exist. The average age of the Comrades runner has steadily increased since 1990 from 35 to over 44 post-Covid. This is going to be a problem for the future of the race if the trend continues.

Two noticeable step changes happened. The first was a full year increase from 39 to 40 in 2003 when the cutoff time was permanently increased to 12-hours. However, the biggest increase was the first post-Covid event which went from 42.1 in 2019 to 44 in 2022. I believe this is largely due to new joiners to the great sport of road running being “lost” during the Covid shutdowns with no road running fixtures (and most participants in 2022 were already “marathon runners” pre-Covid).

All data is based on finishers except 2024 which is qualified entrants. In 2024, average age of qualified starters was 44.3 and I expected that average finisher age for would likely decrease from 44.3 as youngsters have a far higher finisher percentage rate than the old timers. However the final average age for finishers actually increased to 44.5 because a higher proportion of youngsters who do not arrive at the start line. It will be interesting to see the movement on the 2025 qualified to finisher average age.

Almost three quarters (73.9%) of the qualified fields is between the age of 35 and 54. Most Comrades runners take early retirement – there are less than 450 runners over 65. There are just 850 starters under the age of 30. The kids of today…

The male and female charts are very comparable with a slight difference with a higher percentage of women between 35 and 44, a trend that is reversed in the older categories.

I’ve tracked novices separately. Interestingly, the bell curve is very similar but everything happens 5 years earlier with 75.1% of novices being between 30 and 49 years of age.  The average age of qualified novices is 41.1.

Detailed Batch Breakdown

Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of what the batches look like at Comrades 2025. There are 22670 qualified entrants (up from 20574 in 2024). Normally the number of starters drops by 10% so I expect just over 20000 starters on 8 June. This will make it the largest Down run ever beating the 19047 starters in 2018 but the overall record of 23961 starters at the 2000 Up run is not in danger.

The drop off from entrants to qualified is just 6.2% which is much lower than the 14.6% in 2024. I expect that increasing the qualification cutoff times by 10 minutes has had a big impact here (and will do separate analysis on this).

A big difference this year is moving from 8 to 16 batches (plus a special K batch for Louis Massyn and friends for his 50^th Comrades). The batches are now much smaller (I’ve included the 2024 figures for comparison) and, combined with the two pot start, should result in a safer, less congested start for everyone. The true test will be comparing the start line crossing times between 2023 and 2025 but I expect everyone will benefit.

As one would expect the average age of those within each batch increases as one goes down the alphabet. An anomaly is J batch which is at the back of Group 1 and includes runners slower than those in M batch, just behind the Green Numbers in L, at the front of Group 2. This is also apparently to ease congestion.

What is interesting is the very different distribution of the male and female entrants by batch. There is a lot more testosterone in Group 1: 59% of the men but just 36% of the women will be setting of at 5:45am.

Female athletes comprise 20.4% of the qualified field (up from 19.6% in 2024). Cursory analysis shows that they benefitted more than the men from the additional 10 minutes to qualify (which was arbitrarily changed by a previous Race Director to 4h50 before the 2019 event).

Breakdown by Previous Finishes

Over a quarter, 27%, of the field are novices and a further 17% are going for their second finish (no doubt the majority of these are aiming for a back-to-back medal). There’ll be plenty of fresh legs on  display on the road to Durban with 72% of the field having run 4 or fewer Comrades and just 11% are running in a Green Number. These figures are almost identical to 2024 data.

The male and female graphs look very different with more than half of the female field going for their first or second finish and just 6.4% running in a Green Number. In comparison, the male graph has over 42% between 2 and 9 finishes (no doubt many of whom have designs on a Green Number). Over one in ten, 12%, of the men will be running in a Green Number.

The gender difference is likely due to it being more difficult for women to train for Comrades. As my wife continually points out, global studies have shown that on average married men have 7 additional hours of leisure time than married women (hence my ability to write up these stats)! On a more serious note, environmental factors are definitely at play (e.g. men can run on their own, most women can’t). Another contributing factor could be that women are just more sensible than men (one up and one down is the sensible way to run Comrades).

There are 7 triple Green women and 8 quadruple Green men lining up on 8 June. A lot of attention will be on Louis Massyn as he aims to become the first human to run the same ultra 50 times (sadly Barry Holland has a long term injury and won’t be lining up this year). We don’t have anyone running their 40^th Comrades this year but there are 3 ladies going 30: Gina Hinchliffe, Helen Mann (both from Stella AC) and Malie van der Walt (from Actom AC).

The cumulative percentage graph provides a good illustration of just how quickly the medal count heads towards 100% and that female entrants have far fewer finishes than the men.

I also took a look at the DNQs by medal. Almost 40% of the DNQs are novices with over half of the female DNQs coming from novice entries. I would assume that this is because of the early entry requirement and high risk of injury in your first year of marathon running (I entered Comrades 2002 but only ran my first in 2003 due to injury). It would also be interesting to know how many women got out of this year’s Comrades by falling pregnant (my wife missed her second Comrades with this escape clause).

Also sad to see 12.5% of DNQs come from Green Numbers – especially those with 30+ finishes who no doubt would like one more chance to hear Chariots of Fire before dawn. Of those with less than 10 finishes, the lowest dropout rate is those with a single finish (11.5%).

Entrants by Region

Gauteng has more than twice the number of entrants than any other province / region and, combined with KwaZulu Natal, make up 56% of the qualified entrants. The Western Cape are in a distant third and no other province gets above 10%. Look out for Northern Cape runners on 8 June – they are as rare as a ruby in Kimberley.

I’ve only done this stat on finishers before. Both the International and other African countries numbers are 2% higher than their 2024 finish numbers. There is generally a higher drop off from those who travel but this looks to be a good trend for the travel industry.

Qualifying Marathons

Cape Town maintains its position as the most popular qualifying option for Comrades runners with Elands (a downhill flyer and 4^th largest in 2024) the only other marathon to break 1000. Durban International breaks into the Top 3 after being 6^th on the list in 2024. Kaapsehoop (another downhill flyer) drops from 2^nd to 4^th but the big loser is Two Oceans moving from 3^rd to 9^th.

Gauteng dominates the table with 8 events in the Top 20. The only other provinces represented are Western Cape (4), KwaZulu Natal (3), Mpumalanga (3), Eastern Cape and Free State.

This year Benoni Harriers reclaim the battle of Benoni by 10 qualifiers over Benoni Northerns. Benoni Northerns also have by the slowest average qualifying time of 4:19:14 (and that is taking into account adjusted times for those that used the 48km option for their qualifier). The second slowest average is Irene 48k with a marathon adjusted time of 4:17:42. The pancake flat Durban City produces the fastest average time for the second year in a row (3:54:22) with Cape Town, Duban International and Tony Viljoen Masters the only others to average under 4 hours. The overall average qualifying time for Comrades 2025 entrants is 4:03:29.

This year I’ve added in the finishers of each event to work out the percentage that used the race for their qualifier. Incredibly, 44% of Durban International and 41% of Elands runners use these events to qualify. Other marathons above 33% are Dolphin Coast, BNAC, Durban City and Sasolburg. On the low end are Two Oceans 6%, Peninsula 12% (who had a terrible headwind this year) and Cape Town 17%.

[add write up for international]

Whilst 38% of the field comes from Gauteng, only 26% use marathons within the province to qualify. KZN are more parochial with 18% of the field and 17% using the province for qualification purposes. Many runners travel for their qualification marathon with the Western Cape (9% of entrants but 23% of qualifiers) and Mpumalanga (4% of entrants but 16% of qualifiers) getting most of the tourism benefit.

Note: There were 2,020 entrants with “Other” as their qualification marathon which is excluded from the data. Many international runners fall into this category so the International % is lower than it should be.

March, with 23%, is by far the most popular qualification month. October, largely off the back of Cape Town Marathon, is second with 16% followed by April with 15%. The rest of the qualification period is fairly evenly spread out with the low numbers in September, December and January explained by the lower number of marathons available during those months. Comrades changed the qualification period to be full year but the marathon calendar still needs to catch up – only 1% of the field qualifies between June and August. Last minute qualifications are the order of the day for 11% of the field who qualify on the first weekend of May.

A standard marathon is the qualification distance of choice with 89% going this route. Most of the remaining 11% run a ‘short’ ultra (which generally have a much easier average pace for seeding). There are 24 runners who qualified with a run of 60km or longer including 7 athletes who’ve flexed by using a 100km qualifier. Amongst this group, perhaps the most interesting to watch out for as an ‘unknown surprise package’ on 8 June is the Frenchman Guillaume Ruel who ran a 6:13:42 at the 100km Orange Curtain race in Los Angeles.

Fastest Qualifiers

Below is a list of the Top 50 male and female qualifiers. All the gold medals should come from this group with most from the Top 25.

Note: Where an ultra marathon was used as a qualifier, I use an algorithm to convert this to an equivalent marathon time.

In 2024, seven of the men’s gold medallists came from the fastest 50 qualifiers. It will be interesting to see how many of are claimed in 2025. There are quite a few debutants including the Frenchman Guillaume Ruel whose adjusted 100km time of 6h13 equates to a marathon time of 2h09. Another interesting name on the list is the Nao Kazami, the Japanese runner who finished 3^rd in 2019. One name missing from the Top 50 is Alexsei Beresnev who led for much of the 2024 race and finished 11^th. I though he got his tactics wrong and wouldn’t be surprised to see him in the Top 10 this year.

With the different seeding system this year, I am also interested to see whether how many from B batch finish in the top 100 and whether anyone from B can challenge for a gold medal.

In 2024, all of the female golds came from the fastest 20 qualifiers. Irvette van Zyl in 33^rd will hope to break that pattern. All of last year’s Top 10 have returned in 2025. There are a few debutants that will hope to pull a surprise and there is a very large Russian contingent this year. In the last few years all the ladies have been running for second behind the dominant Gerda Steyn – tomorrow will tell us if it will once again be a one horse race or whether we’ll have a new champion.

Top 50 Clubs

Here are the 50 clubs with the biggest representation at Comrades 2025. Hollywood AC KZNA keep their spot at the top of the chart and break 1000 runners for the first time. They also have an excellent entered to qualified conversion rate of 97.8% (their CGA branch in 7^th does even better with 99.1%).

Team Vitality CGA keeps second spot and Team Vitality AGN replaces RunZone in third. RunZone share this position with Waterfall City AC and top the ‘regular’ running club charts. The ‘old school’ traditional clubs are headed by Benoni Northerns (8^th), Polokwane City (9^th) and Dolphin Coast (10^th).

Credit must go to RCS Gugulethu AC who score 100% on the entrants to qualified runners test. Others in the top 25 who perform well on this count are Magnolia with an even 99% and the 98.3% of Fat Cats AC entrants who clearly want their slice of the Comrades cake.

Only 20.4% of the qualified entries are female but two of the Top 50 clubs can boast that over 1 in 3 of their runners lack a Y chromosome: Durbanville (36.4%) and Jeppe Quondam (35.8%). However, if you are a straight lady or a gay guy looking for talent, then the 3 clubs to join for a training run with potential benefits (90% or greater male) are Sibanye Stillwater, Faranani or Sasol Marathon Club.

Youngest Starters

Here are the youngest male and female starters. All the men are novices and there are 11 who are 21 on the nose or younger. Further down the list, at 21.4 years old, Michael Herholdt running for Maties is the youngest non-novice male. Jean-Pierre van Dyk from RAC, who will be just 22.8 years old on race day, already has an impressive 3 medals.

On the ladies’ side, there is just one under 21. Angy McColl, 4^th youngest at 21.7, is the youngest back-to-back medallist in the field and is running this year again to raise money for the Viljoenskroon Old Age Home. She will be joined by her father Stuart running his 21^st and mother Maranata running her 15^th. 10^th youngest Inka Janse van Rensburg will also be running her back-to-back Comrades with her mother, Liesel, who is showing off her Green Number for the first time.

Ela Meiring and Claudia Matuvi from Zimbabwe (the only non-South African on the list) are both aiming for a third finish.

Oldest Starters

Here’s the oldest 20 men who’ve qualified for Comrades 2025. Top of the charts is the evergreen Johannes Maros Mosehla who is running for the 3^rd time in the octogenarian category. He is a good bet to add another digit to the oldest ever Comrades finisher record.

Mosehla is an incredible outlier, there are just two humans who’ve completed Comrades at 80 or older – the other is Wallace Hayward. This year two other gentleman, Herman Verhage from Magnolia and Matule Headbush from JCC, have the opportunity to add their names to this very exclusive list.

There are 3 novices on the list but just one, Pikzo Sibanyoni, will be a first time starter. All the best to Nal Lokeshwar on his 2^nd attempt and I will be rooting for Solomon Chewane who has 6 starts but no medal to show for it yet.

However, the man of the hour will be the 15^th oldest man in the field, the legendary Louis Massyn who will hopefully become the first person to achieve 50 Comrades medals. This will also be a world first as no other human has run the same ultra 50 times or more.

Women live 5 to 7 years longer than men but tend to hang up their Comrades shoes much earlier. These two facts may be correlated. There is just one woman who has finished Comrades over the age of 74: Petra Myburgh. Petra missed last year’s event but is back in 2025 for her 25^th run and will hopefully extend her record to 76.6 on 8 June.

Pat Fisher from Stella is second oldest and has the second most medals for females with 34 and is followed by Linda Icely who adds credence to the old in Old Edwardians. I did a guest speaking slot at Old Eds’ Comrades breakfast last Sunday and Linda was still looking spritely after running the RAC 10k earlier that morning.

There are very few ladies who’ve finished Comrades at 70-years or older and this year the 70+ women’s field is just 12 strong. Can we call them the ‘dainty dozen’? Two of these are novices – Wenche Dörum from Norway and Chandra Ramamoorthy from the USA.

A special mention needs to go to Australian Jennifer Kellett who trains with the Fordyce Fusion team. She was a novice in 2024 and ran a phenomenal 9h08 as a 69-year-old. Returning as a 70-year-old she will be gunning for the 70+ women’s record of 10:29:26 which was set by American runner Suzanne Koonce in 2024.

A final note of recognition must go to Kleintjie van Schalkwyk, a relative spring chicken at 61.6, and therefore not on the list. Kleintjie will be aiming to extend her most medals for a female record to 36 this year and is best placed to be the first lady to earn a quadruple Green Number.

Extra 10 Minute Qualification Beneficiaries

In January this year, the Comrades Board announced that there were reverting to a 5-hour standard marathon qualification (with additional time also added on for various ultra distances). A massive 2068 runners (9.1% of the qualified field) have benefitted from this change.

What is noticeable is that whilst just 1 in 5 Comrades runners are female, 1 in 3 of the beneficiaries of the more relaxed qualifying times are women. There is plenty of data to show that women pace Comrades far better than men and this should translate to a higher proportion of the 4h50+ women earning a medal. This is the first time in many years that the female participation has breached 20% and highlights the importance of sensible and inclusive decision making. [This article provides some good insights for race organisers that want to become more female friendly: https://www.sheraces.com/race-guidelines]

In terms of Comrades experience, the benefits were felt across the board. The largest group are those with 1 to 4 medals followed by the novices. Over 300 Green Numbers also benefitted from the change.

The natural follow-on question is, “How many of these will actually earn a medal?”. I will of course run the stats after the race but predict a success rate of around 50-60%.

Why was the qualification time changed in the first place?

Ahead of the 2019 event, the Comrades qualification time was arbitrarily reduced from 5 hours to 4h50 by a race director who seemed to have a strong aversion to joggers participating in his race.

Contrary to popular belief, there is no medical basis for running a qualifier. The sole reason qualification times were introduced in 1975 (and even then only applied to novices) was that Comrades could only accommodate 1,500 entrants, was heavily oversubscribed and the 4h30 qualification was a way to ensure that those entering Comrades had the best chance of being able to finish. For more history on the Comrades qualification times and analysis on success rates see: https://runningmann.co.za/2025/01/08/comrades-qualification-times/

Shoe Stats

Asics maintain their market share dominance with 34% of Comrades runners picking them as their choice of footwear between Pietermaritzburg and Durban. Adidas rise from 16 to 20% and Nike drops from 16 to 13%. The other brands are largely unchanged in 2025.

In terms of the fastest 100 qualifiers, Nike dominates both the men and women. Adidas are second for the men and third for the women. Maxed makes a strong showing for the men and Saucony for the women. Much of this is driven by sponsorship (both team and personal for those runners fortunate it have it).

Analysing shoes by qualification time shows that faster runners run in Nike and Adidas but their market share steadily decreases as one moves further back in the field. The opposite it true of Asics, New Balance and Brooks. Other brands are largely constant.

I thought that shoes by age would match the above but it only does so for Adidas (preferred by the young) and Asics (preferred by the mature).

On the gender front, men have a higher ratio of Asics and Adidas whilst women are more likely to ear Brooks, New Balance and Saucony.

Green numbers also love running in their Asics. I thought it was interesting that novices largely match the full field percentages.

Those wearing Maxed and Adidas have the best qualification race whilst Hoka wearers may need to stick to the trails.

For completeness I’ve also included that shoe by batch which shows how some brands like Asics, New Balance and Brooks steadily increase markets share as you go further back in the fields whilst others like Nike and Adidas diminish.

What’s in a Name?

If you are chatting to someone along the route and can’t remember their name, your best bet is to call them ‘Michael’ or ‘David’ as they both top the charts with 129 qualified Comrades entrants.

The other first names in the Top 10 are Andrew, Thabo, Bongani, Richard, Sipho, Mark, Sibusiso, Tshepo and Daniel. Between 2024 and 2025, Peter’s have been on the decline and drop out of the Top 10 into 17^th place.

With just 20% of the field being female there are no feminine names in the overall Top 20 but ‘Michelle’, ‘ma belle’ and ‘Comrades’ are words that go together well: As in 2024, Michelles dominate the ladies field although there are five fewer in 2025 (37 down from 42 in 2024). Sarahs are making a strong statement in second with 29 – and all the Sarahs who entered qualified. Samantha and Sibongile are 3^rd and 4^th with Nicole, Debbie and Megan sharing 5^th place.

On the last name front, there will be 133 Dlaminis and 120 Ndlovus lining up on Sunday. The Khumalos also just break the three-figure mark. Traditional African names dominate the rest of the Top 10 (Ngcobo, Mkhize,  Nkosi, Mthembu, Mhlonglo and Sithole). Only the stereotypical English surname of Smith manages to crack the Top 10. The Bothas need to pull up their socks, plummeting out of the Top 10 into 19^th place in 2025.

Within the Indian community, the Naidoos in 12th earn bragging rights with 57 starters over the Govenders, who are a lowly 38th with 33 starters. There are just two Naidus running.

When it comes to combinations, there will be 5 Xolani Ndlovus (I guess you could call them the elephants on the road). One of the Bongani Dlaminis is not running this year so they are down to 4 athletes in 2025. There will be 14 ‘name triplets’ lining up on 8 June: Themba Nkosi, Nkosinathi Ndlovu, Nhlanhla Khumalo, Jaco Van Der Merwe, Sifiso Ndaba, Busisiwe Khumalo, Sthembiso Mthembu, Riaan Van Zyl, Thulani Nkosi, Mark Evans, Sibusiso Mkhize, Sipho Mkhize, Bongani Zwane and Deena Naidoo.

Expecting parents who want to maximise the probability of raising strong Comrades runners should consider naming them Thabiso, Thapelo, Thembinkosi, Thamsanqa, Xolani, Sanele, Vincent, Nkululeko, Kenneth, Nhlanhla, Thomas, Kabelo, Moses, Calvin, Njabulo, Dumisani or Sarah as they all have perfect attendance records at Comrades 2025. You can further enhance your chances of breeding robust Comrades runners by finding a spouse with the surname Mofokeng, Mabaso, Mkhwanazi or Langa.

Names to be avoided are James, George, Thokozani and Jan – and if you marry a Du Toit I would strongly suggest keeping your maiden name as 1 in 4 doesn’t make it to the start line.

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