cape town marathon Archives - The Running Mann

25th August 202631st August 2026

Yuzriq Meyer: Running’s Biggest Fraud?

Yurziq Meyer had been obese for most of his adult life. According to his social media accounts, Meyer started the year weighing 115kg and dropped almost 50kg in seven short months to currently tip the scales at 68kg.

Meyer has used his weight loss journey to propel his social media popularity.

He originally claimed that his radical weight loss is due to regular workouts, increasing daily step counts, running, cleaner eating, lifestyle changes and consistent adherence to his health goals. He also claims to have run the Two Oceans ultra and half marathons on consecutive days and followed this up with a very public Cape Town Marathon finish in May. He has the medals hanging on the walls at home to proudly show off his accomplishments.

But just like Yuzriq Meyer in January, this is all one big, fat lie. As unpleasant as it is to look at, it’s time that the naked truth about running’s biggest fraud is thoroughly examined. His running claims are a blatant litany of lies. These days he also freely admits to using retatrudtide and heavily markets these untested, unapproved drugs to his social media followers.

4th June 202610th June 2026

World Marathon Meltdown: Trouble Brewing at Cape Town Marathon?

It is an open secret that relations between the Cape Town Marathon (CTM) organisers and Athletics South Africa (ASA) / Western Province Athletics (WPA) have deteriorated to the extent that lawyers need to be present at every meeting. Personally, I view a fight between CTM and ASA as a bit like watching England and Australia playing rugby – it a battle of arrogance versus ineptitude and the best you can do is to support the referee.

I received the following lawyer’s letter sent on behalf of ASA and WPA from a confidential source as well as the reply from David Higgs, who I understand to be CTM and Faces’ CEO Clark Gardner’s attorney. The letter is a complaint of decorum about “breach of protocol” that ASA and WPA officials were not invited to the event as is customary.

Whilst some might view it as petty, it highlights the extent to which the relationship between CTM and ASA / WPA has declined. This is the equivalent of not inviting your brother to your wedding.

23rd May 202623rd May 2026

Seeding Stuff-up: CTM left with egg on face as 4 ‘non-elite’ runners finish Top 10

After the 2025 Marathon cancellation, serious organization issues seem to be coming to the fore at the Cape Town Marathon. There was controversy ahead of Saturday’s 10k Peace Run with several local runners initially being denied Elite status by an apparent unpublished “by invitation only” policy for elites.

After a social media campaign, Dewyane Mouries was eventually granted elite status at the 11^th hour. At today’s Peace Run, Mouries finished 7^th fully vindicating his Elite status credentials and raising additional questions about why he had to fight for his right to start at the front of the field. Another athlete who was initially refused Elite status, Keaton Lott, finished 8^th.

21st May 202622nd May 2026

Local champ denied Elite classification at CTM Peace Run despite running qualifying time

Dewayne Mouries is in the form of his life. The 38-year-old police officer who runs for the Boxer Athletics Club recently won the Richmond Corner 10k in a personal best of 30:16 (where he finished almost a minute ahead of his nearest competitor). He also ran 30:48 at the Gqeberha leg of the ABSA Run Your City (RYC) series and a 30:43 at the Paarl SportSA 10km.

At the latter event, Mouries finished third just 5 seconds behind Yanga Malusi and 2 seconds behind William Kaptein. Both Kaptein and Malusi are in the Elite field at the CTM Peace Run. Mouries was hoping to break 30 minutes for the first time at the cancelled Cape Town ABSA RYC 10k two weeks ago and had now set his sights on this milestone at the CTM Peace Run.

Dewayne Mouries finishes third at the recent SportSA 10k in Paarl just 5 seconds behind winner Yanga Malusi (photo supplied).

17th February 202617th February 2026

Anatomy of a Scam (An investigation into race entry scamming)

With unprecedented demand and road running race entries selling out across the country scammers are having a field day fleecing runners desperate for entries.

It is difficult to know whether all the scamming is done by one person using different numbers or whether there are multiple scammers. Some numbers definitely belong to the same person and there is at least one number, 0738823545, that has been in use for over six years. It is also difficult to estimate how many people have been scammed over the years but the number of victims is likely in the thousands.

27th October 202528th October 2025

A Deep Dive into the Cape Town Marathon cancellation (and the implications thereof)

There are two immediate questions to answer:

“Was the correct call made to cancel the Cape Town Marathon?” I believe that the answer to this question is a “Qualified Yes”.
“Should winds of 48km/h and gusts of 60km/h have resulted in the cancellation of the Cape Town Marathon?” To that the answer is an “Emphatic No”.

Actually, there is a third question that needs to be asked, “If we have 48km/h winds with 60km/h gusts on the night of 23 May 2026, will the Cape Town Marathon be cancelled again?” If the answer to that question is “Yes”, then we might as well kiss our World Marathon Major aspirations goodbye, pack up and go home. On the other hand, if the answer is “No”, then we should be looking at the root causes to ensure that they are not repeated.

24th October 202526th October 2025

Major Marathon Cancellations, Windy Marathons and the Peninsula Marathon Argument

This is a companion article to a forthcoming deep dive analysis article on the Cape Town Marathon cancellation and the impacts thereof. The article takes a look at the reasons behind other major marathons getting cancelled, marathons run in high wind and deals with the Peninsula Marathon argument.

Previous World Marathon Major Cancellations

Aside from Covid, there have been a very small number of Abbotts World Marathon Majors (AWMM) event cancellations. They are largely irrelevant in the comparison to the Cape Town Marathon (CTM) cancellation as the circumstances are very different.

The cancelled events are as follows.

New York Marathon 1995: The wheelchair division was cancelled a few minutes before the scheduled start time because 72km/h gusts of wind at the startline on Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. The gusts resulted in some planks that were erected to protect the bridge’s surface being ripped off and blown around. Organisers were concerned that lightweight racing wheelchairs, which can easily be destabilized by crosswinds, would be blown over or pushed into barriers on the bridge and therefore cancelled the wheelchair race. The able-bodied race (the vast majority of the field) continued as planned. The organisers faced criticism of discrimination, poor communication and not consulting with the wheelchair athletes when making the decision.

It is noteworthy that in 2014, New York Marathon runners faced sustained wind of 32-40km/h and gusts of up to 80km/h but the full event went ahead as planned. The organisers learned their lesson from 1995 and the wheelchair start was altered to fully accommodate this division.

1st April 20252nd April 2025

Breaking News: Comrades to take CTM’s October race date in 2026

[For anyone late to the party, this article was published on 1 April as an April Fool’s joke – but it does provide a satirical commentary on the South African road running scene.]

In a surprise move, Comrades have announced that they will be moving their 2026 race date to the October slot recently vacated by Cape Town Marathon (CTM). Comrades has traditionally been run on the second Sunday in June which would be three weeks after CTM’s new 23 May race date.

12th March 202513th March 2025

Save the Date (An evaluation of Cape Town Marathon’s date change)

Cape Town Marathon announced that the 2026 race date was moving to the end of May and the South African road running internet went mad. Social media is great at polarizing people and this case was no different…

In the left corner you had the Comrades runners, gloves up and spitting mad that the new race date is two weeks before Comrades meaning that they must choose between the two biggest and most prestigious distance races in South Africa in 2026.

In the right corner, you had the ‘a marathon is far enough’ camp, gloves up and spitting mad at runners who think the world revolves around the Comrades Marathon (and also seemingly very upset at ‘entitled’ Comrades runners being very upset).

21st October 202421st October 2024

The Rise of the Cape Town Marathon

In 2023 the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon became the first standard marathon in South Africa to crack the 10,000 finisher mark. The previous record was held by the Soweto Marathon with 9,274 finishers in 2019. Yesterday, Cape Town Marathon cemented its place on the top of the finisher’s table with 16,351 finishers – a massive jump of over 3,000 additional runners.

A comparison between the big four marathon events in South Africa makes for some interesting analysis. Cape Town Marathon has consistently been the most runner centric and best organised of the big four and this shows in their finisher numbers.