Karin-Mari’s Story (How Two Morons Stole her Special Moment)

[Sunday 12 April, 07:39, University of Cape Town, Finish Line].

There is just one gold medal remaining at the 2026 Two Oceans Marathon. Twenty were handed out at Saturday’s ultra and 19 have been claimed so far at the half marathon. Who will claim the 10^th placed ladies’ position?

Two Oceans hosts the country’s largest, richest and most prestigious half marathon. It attracts a strong international field. All of today’s medals have been won by professional athletes – most of them from other countries. But then there’s a surprise. Instead of yet another purple Hollywood or green Nedbank vest adding to their weekend’s medal tally, a diminutive figure in the black and white of Jeppe Athletic Club rounds the corner and hits the finish straight.

Regular, non-professional club athletes seldom win gold medals at major events. At the Two Oceans half marathon it is extremely rare. And yet it looks like a Jeppe athlete is going to claim the final gold of the day. All the elite athletes have their names emblazoned in large letters across their race bib. The Jeppe athlete is not an elite and it’s hard to read her name as she has a normal, anonymous race number displaying: A65054.

The athlete is Karin-Mari Dötze and she’s just run the race of her life. As she hits the grass she hears an excited voice from the stands crying, “You’re 10^th lady.” A look of surprise crosses Karin-Mari’s face and then she gives a little shake of the head. She can’t have heard that right. But just in case, she empties the tank over the final stretch to make sure that no one pips her on the line.

Those watching on TV have the luxury of on-screen graphics. I expect that there were cheers, screams of delight and a couple of spilt cups of coffee as excited Jeppestown residents jumped up from their couches. The Jeppe Athletics Club WhatsApp group starts going crazy with messages of congratulations. It is an incredibly proud moment for one of South Africa’s great running clubs. A gold medal at Two Oceans is something special for the club to savour.

But our exhausted heroine knows nothing of that. She’s out of breath, hanging onto the railings just past the finish banner. Karin-Mari gave it all on the Cape Town roads. She crushed the notoriously nasty Southern Cross Drive and, in the process, scythed through the elite field despite having the slight handicap of starting just behind the sponsored athletes when the cannon blasted.

To Karin-Mari’s joy, the unidentified voice in the crowd was right. There is one lonely gold medal next to the large pile of silvers and, in disbelief, it is given to her. This is how Karin-Mari recalls the moment, “I was so, so happy. Everywhere they published I am 10th lady. I even got my gold medal. I walked around to the info desk with one of the other Top 10 ladies and asked where we should go for podium and prize giving. They told us we should just listen for our names to be called.”

While waiting for her name to be called, Karin-Mari met up with a friend who took a few photos. Karin-Mari can be seen radiant and beaming on the UCT fields. This is by far the best moment in her running career.

However, just getting to the race involved a lot of planning and logistical juggling. Karin-Mari is Grade 3 teacher at Laerskool Emfulenipark in Vanderbijlpark. She’s a single mom with a 7-year old daughter. Her training regime involved months of early mornings and late nights.

Finding the time to train is one thing, but getting to Cape Town for a goal race during term-time is quite another. Fortunately, Karin-Mari’s mom stepped-up to look after daughter for the weekend. I asked about whether she had a problem getting leave and it turns out the Emfulenipark school principal also played a key supporting role in this story, “My principal is an absolute angel. He gave me time off to run – he actually gave me extra days because the flights had become so expensive.”

Twenty minutes have passed since she crossed the line and the UCT fields are starting to fill up with runners from lower seeding batches. Karin-Mari thought it was probably time to phone home and let her mom and daughter know the fantastic news. Before doing so, she decided to re-check the results as she was still in complete disbelief, “It really felt so unreal. I asked my friend to refresh the results and double check whether I had really placed 10th. When she refreshed the results, I looked at the screen and they had placed me 12th.”

This is a moment frozen in time. A moment where euphoria and jubilation instantly evaporate and are replaced with a dead, hollow feeling, “I thought, ‘they ripped my heart out right there’.”

Runners are stoic and, despite the disappointment, Karin-Mari rationalised, “I know sometimes ladies could run faster from other batches and that they could be placed before me. I told myself it’s okay, if they really ran faster, I’ll just train harder for next year. Everyone deserves their spot if they ran faster.”

The jubilant mood was now sombre and the spring in her step was gone. She left the race “really disappointed and not knowing what now.” Twelfth was a great result for a club athlete but it was not a Top 10 finish at South Africa’s biggest half marathon. No longer in the Top 10 online results, the word had started to spread and the messages of congratulations were replaced with those of condolence by club mates.

Whilst Karin-Mari is dealing with the emotional turmoil in solitude, seventh placed “lady” Luke Jacobs walks back to his run crew’s cheer zone a kilometre from the finish line and enjoys a few beers with his mates. Tenth placed “lady” Nic Bradfield heads to Forries with the cool kids.

[Sunday 12 April, Lunchtime, University of Cape Town, Hospitality Tent]

Most of the dignitaries and invited guests are gone. Just the core team remains. The mood in the hospitality tent is one of exhausted contentment. There are handshakes and high fives all round between the Two Oceans Marathon NPC board members and Stillwater Sports team. On the back foot from the word go, after only being able to start planning from September 2025, we are all immensely proud of what has been achieved. After the disastrous event of 2025, runners are happy and the Two Oceans Marathon is back after an incident free weekend.

I am just about to leave when chair Chris Goldschmidt calls me over. I had been part of the Race Advisory Committee where we carefully allocated runners to appropriate seedings and special care was taken to ensure we did not have a situation where a runner from a lower seeding batch could run a faster time than a Top 10 finisher. That would be embarrassing, messy and hard to explain. As an organising team we don’t want any controversies in 2026.

Chris points to his screen and tells me, “We’ve got two Top 10 ladies from lower batches. One is an international runner.” This was the highest my heart rate got the entire weekend (despite running up most of Constantia Nek).

Guidance was sought from the senior technical official. The official rules had been checked and confirmed: for Top 10 overall places, this is done on crossing the finish line rather than running time*.

* Note: This is different for age category prizes where gun batch to finish mat time is used.

The official hard copy of the results have in fact already been signed off by the senior technical official. Karin-Mari is still in 10^th on these official results but she does not know that. The provisional online and app results are what the public sees and here she is 12th.

Chris and I agree that we’ll have to evaluate how this happened and how to prevent it reoccurring next year but that is a Monday problem. The thought that this was a couple of morons banditting in a woman’s race number never crossed our minds.

[Sunday 12 April, Early Afternoon, At a retirement village in Noordhoek]

Most of the board members take the opportunity to have a quick afternoon nap before heading to their final duty of the weekend – attending the official prize giving at 5pm at the Cape Sun.

I arrive back at my mother’s house where I am staying for the weekend. I probably should take a nap as well but decide to check my emails first. There are several new messages but the one I open first says, “Cheating/misconduct at Half marathon TTOM 2026”

The content reads,

“The attached screenshots show that the male runner (Luke Jacobs) in these pictures ran on the number of a woman named Larissa Parekh. The race result now shows that Larissa is 7th overall.

Please investigate and let me know. This is unacceptable.

The rules state that both runners involved should be disqualified and the result scrapped.”

I immediately send the information and pictures to Chris Goldschmidt and Finish Time, asking out timing partners to change the result to “Query” status so that it no longer appears on the online results.

Karin-Mari is now in 11^th position but she will only find this out on Monday morning.

[Sunday 12 April, Early Evening, Cape Sun, 2026 Two Oceans Marathon Prize Giving Ceremony]

I find prize givings to be very formulaic and boring. It’s like a hill repeat session you have to endure before rewarding yourself with some snacks and a beer. But as this is the last formal function to round off a fantastic event (and there was the reward of beer once the formalities were over), I get an Uber for the long drive from Noordhoek to the city centre.

The prize giving is more interesting than I was expecting. Mosibodi Whitehead keeps the audience entertained with insightful questions to the athletes as they are called on stage. Gerda was of course her normal charming self. With men’s surprise ultra runner winner Arthur Jantjies already on a 8-hour bus trip back to Hopetown, it was left to second-place Onalenna Khonkhobe to entertain the audience. However, there was one interview that stole the show.

With a school day tomorrow, the only junior lady at the prizegiving was 3^rd placed Samantha Gavin. She explained how she wanted to join other family members and run in 2025 but was still too young. Samantha completely enchanted the audience. Her excitement and youthful exuberance brought a fresh energy in the room.

Gerda Steyn, who was sitting just in front of me, might have won her seventh title but she produced her biggest smile of the weekend as a shy schoolgirl answered Mosibodi Whitehead’s questions. Samantha’s unprepared, unstructured answers and youthful innocence captivated the audience. She got to rub shoulders with her heroes onstage in the group photo (she just couldn’t drink any of the Champagne that was popped and passed around).

This was an evening Samanatha will never forget. I didn’t think about it at the time but once BrahGate broke I wondered what would have happened if some entitled idiot had run in another junior lady’s number and knocked her off the podium? Samantha would have been sitting at home doing her homework on this Sunday evening instead of revelling in a once in a lifetime memory.

[Correction on previous article: In a previous article I stated that Karin-Mari missed out on the prize giving function because of the uncertainty around final positions. This was incorrect, the Top 10 in the ultra but only Top 5 in the half marathon were invited.]

[Monday 13 April, Morning]

Karin-Mari gets a message from a friend that she should double check the results because now she’s in 11th and “the Larissa athlete is not there anymore.” She is also told that she should “query the Tegan athlete” because her friend knows that the “Tegan girl is actually injured and would not be able to run those times.”

As ActionPhoto starts uploading their race day pictures, Karin-Mari keeps punching in “69738”. Eventually a message displays that there are “8 images found”. She immediately clicks the “Show Images” button and sees what is clearly a male runner competing as Tegan Garvey. Bewildered, she wonders what to do next.

Karin-Mari chats to one of the Jeppe AC’s stalwarts and a mentor, Kim Pain. On Saturday Kim became just the 4^th lady to ever run 30 Two Oceans ultra marathons and is one of only two ladies who’ve earned a triple laurel at both Two Oceans and Comrades. If anyone will know what to do, Kim will.

[Monday 13 April, Late Afternoon]

I get a WhatsApp message from Kim Pain reading, “I have a very distraught Jeppe member Karin-Mari Dötze who was initially 10th placed lady at the half marathon yesterday…”. Kim asks if I can investigate further.

I chat to Kim. She puts me in touch with Karin-Mari. I chat to Karin-Mari. Her first words are, “It was a really tough and emotional day yesterday…” I get investigating. BrahGate erupts.

[Friday 17 April]

By now the story has gained a lot of traction. An email arrives at the info@twooceansmarathon.org.za address. It is an apology from the 10th placed “lady” Nic Bradfield. I contact Karin-Mari to ask if she’d like to see the apology. She would.

I also say, “In the apology Bradfield asked how he can make this right – do you have any ideas?”. Karin-Mari would like to see the apology. I get permission and share it. As for what can be done, not much. Karin-Mari’s magic moment in the sunshine has been stolen and it can never be recovered.

Karin-Mari says, “I really don’t think that there is something that they [Luke Jacobs and Nic Bradfield] can do to fix this. It happened and the moment is gone. I just really hope that people next year really think about the consequences so it does not happen again. It’s just not acceptable what they did. Rules are rules and they should start following them.”

She concludes her voice note with, “They didn’t take my money because I’m still going to get my prize. It was not physical; it was a personal thing that was taken away from me.”

Afterword: Can anything be done for Karin-Mari?

Whilst the moment is gone and the memory is ruined; how do we prevent this from becoming just another story about mediocre men ruining women’s sport? There is perhaps one possible silver-lining to the BrahGate cloud. Karin-Mari is probably the only 2026 Two Oceans half marathon gold medallist that was powered by supplements that she paid for herself and ran in shoes that weren’t sponsored.

When I asked her if she has any sponsors at all Karin-Mari replied, “No, hopefully in the future I will get some sponsors. That will really help me.”

There you go. In a world of social media fakery, if you have the means and are looking for a hard-working, honest and dependable representative for your products, you can’t go wrong supporting the only club athlete to earn a gold medal at the 2026 Two Oceans half marathon.

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