POLOKWANE – The South African 100 km team competed in Spain this past weekend, and not only finished the race but bagged gold medals.
The Championships took place in Los Alcazares on Sunday, 27 November – the South African team took gold medal in the team category with a time of 19:51:40 hours.
Review spoke to Rufus Photo and Johan van der Merwe to find out what challenges they faced and what they enjoyed the most of the race.
Johan explains it was his idea to assemble the team.
“It is obviously a very awesome feeling that the South Africans are world champions,” Johan said.
He further added that they faced a lot of challenges but still managed to bag the team medal. “These guys travelled 22 hours and arrived on the Friday, they thus only had 30 hours to recover before the race on Sunday,” Johan continues.
He says the runners faced a lot of sharp turns on the route which was a very tough.
“If we are granted the opportunity to defend our title, I am sure we will be able to chase down the world record”.
Rufus says he is extremely happy that his team could take gold and that it was a wonderful experience.
“I felt really good during the race and even lead the race for a while, I started to experience some leg pains later on, but told myself that I have to finish,” Rufus recalls.
Rufus adds it was a very enjoyable race for him and that he would definitely compete again.