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Bokaba conquered his 9th Comrades

The Comrades Marathon is the most grueling road race in Southern Africa, it is also the world’s largest and oldest ultra marathon.

It takes a special type of athlete to compete in the Comrades and this year, Levy Bokaba (41), an employee at Warmbaths Forever Resort in Bela-Bela, and a member of the Warmbath’s

Marathon Club was one of 18 884 runners that participated in the 2024 Comrades Marathon.

Finishing with a time of 11: 33, 29 in his 9th consecutive Comrades, he admits he was not happy with his performance. He said: “Things did not go according to plan, and I did not train well, and to boot I drew a ‘G’ number which meant I started in a slower and bigger group of runners. This made it more difficult to pass the other competitors.

Bokaba trained with Steven de Villiers, a colleague at Forever Resort, and they were going to run the up-run together, as this was only De Villiers’ second Comrades. De Villiers unfortunately had to withdraw due to an injury and Bokaba was on his own.

He grew up in Magareng in Mpumalanga and has always enjoyed sport and running. After school, he moved to Johannesburg and it was there that he participated in his first-ever race, the

Jackie Gibson Marathon, over a distance of 21 km in 2003. He did extremely well, and he fell in love with endurance racing.

Bokaba plans to start his training for the 2025 Comrades by July this year with a gentle 21 km race, and he is adamant that his 10th Comrades will be his best. He wants to qualify early enough and plans to get his much-cosseted ‘Green Number’ for his 10th race in style, beating his previous Comrades best time of 7hrs.

“My 10th Comrades will be the biggest of my career, and it’s the down-run which is my favorite.” When asked about athletes that inspired him, he says that he always favored Russian athletes, and his idols are Vladimir Kotov and Olesya Nurgalieva who are both recognized as some of the top performers in the Comrades Marathon, Bokaba even named his daughter Olesya. He says that both his children love sports and he is determined to see his son start running when he is 12 years old.

Thinking of the future, Bokaba said it’s difficult to make plans when you are a Comrades athlete. The race is very addictive and people cannot get enough of it. He initially wanted to do only one, then he went for five, and now he thinks he’ll retire at race twenty.

The other athletes from Bela-Bela who participated in this year’s Comrades were Edna Grahan and Pierre Smit.

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