Sunday 15th June 2008 saw the running of the 83rd Comrades Marathon. This is the toughest and most grueling ultra marathon in the world. It is also the biggest event of its kind. Several records were smashed on this years 87 kilometre race.

Russian athletes dominated the top spots in this race yet again. Leonid Shvetsov won the race and broke the record for an up run, with a time of 5 hours, 24 minutes and 46 seconds. The previous up run record was set by fellow Russian, Vladimir Kotov, in 2000, with a time of 5 hours, 25 minutes and 33 seconds.

He is the only man to have consecutive wins and hold the records for both the up and down runs, since the Comrades legend Bruce Fordyce, in the eighties.

Second man home was Jaroslaw Janicki from Poland and third man was Zimbabwean runner, Stephen Muzhingi. The fist South African home, in 6th spot, was Harmans Mokadi.

The Russian twins Elena and Olesya Nurgalieva, dominated the ladies top positions. Elena claimed first spot, followed by her sister and Tatiana Zhirkova claimed 3rd spot. The first South African lady was Riana van Niekerk in 4th position. Elena won the last up run and Olesya won last years down run.

Of the 11140 runners who started the race at 5.30 am in Durban, 8612 completed the race before cutoff time at 5.30 pm in Pietermaritzburg. The 11140 starters comprised of 9256 men and 1884 ladies. Of the total field, 10622 were South Africans and 1984 were novices.

Dave Rogers from Westville, in South Africa became the most capped man ever, when he completed his 43rd Comrades Marathon. He is 65 years old, but the oldest man to finish this years race was 72.

So, a summary of the  2 top 10 results are as follows:

Men
1. Leonid Schvetsov 5;24;47
2. Jaroslaw Janicki 5;38;2
3. Stephen Muzhingi 5;39;40
4. Oleg Kharitonov 5;42;03
5. Grigory Murzin 5;43;07
6. Harmans Mokgadi 5;47;10
7. Mncedisi Mkhize 4;48;18
8. Vladimir Kotov 5;48;42
9. Johan Oosthuizen 5;50;52
10. Willie Mtolo 5;5336

Ladies
1. Elena Nurgalieva 6;14;37
2. Olesya Nurgalieva 6;15;52
3. Tatyana Zhirkova 6;17;45
4. Marina Myshlyanova 6;30;49
5. Marina Bychkova 6;38;01
6.Riana van Niekerk 6;43;31
7. Maria Bak 6;53;32
8. Farwa Mentoor 6;59;40
9. Lesley Train 7;02;08
10. CarolMercer 7;09;37

The last man to finish before the cutoff  was Herman Verhage in 11;59;59

For more interesting articles on South Africa, Sport and Internet Marketing, visit my blogsite.

Derek Robson is a South African Internet marketer. He has a vision of empowering all fellow South Africans and other non U.S folk, to have equal opportunity and success on the internet, by finding solutions to the many obstacles facing them. He is a syndicated article writer. He and his wife Sally, have started a string of sites, resources, courses and articles, as part of Dersalsites. For daily postings and articles, on Internet marketing, South African online business, list building, affiliate marketing, article marketing, blogging, seo, the law of attraction, rugby and other general topics, visit Derek at: http://dersalsites.com/southafricanbusiness/ 

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