OPINION: Despite struggling in Paris, Gerda Steyn enjoyed a memorable season

Gerda Steyn received a lot of support ahead of the Olympic marathon. None of it was from me.

In the build-up to the Paris Games, Steyn had won three ultra-marathon races, all in record time, including the brutal 86km Comrades Marathon in June.

My criticism of her racing schedule, however, was based on my assumption that the Olympic marathon was going to be won in a time of around 2:24:00.

In peak form, even on a relatively tough course, I believed Steyn had a real chance of getting a medal, or at least putting up a fight in the lead pack, and I felt she had flushed that opportunity by racing Comrades.

But hindsight offers 20/20 vision, and when you’re wrong, you’re wrong. I was wrong.

The pace up front in the Olympic marathon was far quicker than I expected, especially in the second half, and Dutch athlete Sifan Hassan won gold in 2:22:55, with the top five athletes all dipping under 2:24:00. Even at her best, in those conditions on that course, Steyn would never have earned a medal.

Perfect season

So if we look back on her year with the knowledge that an Olympic medal was out of the question, she had what can only be described as a near-perfect season.

She won three of South Africa’s biggest races and she made a bucket full of money, which is of course important for an athlete who makes their living from road running.

On top of this, Steyn enjoyed a solid performance at the Paris Games. While some people predicted she would improve on her 15th-place finish at the Tokyo Games in 2021, after racing Comrades, that was never going to happen. She simply didn’t have enough time to recover.

Despite being the national 42km record holder, she finished behind compatriots Cian Oldknow and Irvette van Zyl in Paris, and this should have been expected. But for Steyn to finish 45th in 2:32:51, after such a taxing racing schedule, was phenomenal.

League of her own

Having won Om Die Dam, Two Oceans and Comrades, to then clock 2:32 in a marathon on a challenging course (at least by international standards) is incredible. I don’t think there’s another athlete on the planet who could achieve all that in the space of just five months.

Though I criticised her for racing too much, in hindsight, I feel she got it spot on.

If any athletes had qualified for the Olympic marathon and Steyn had been selected ahead of them, that would have been a problem, but only three athletes qualified, so nobody missed out.

Steyn won three big races this year, topped up her bank account and produced a solid result in Paris. It doesn’t get better than that.