As almost 21 000 runners attempted to complete this year’s Comrades Marathon, a Ballito tech start-up team worked to ensure their mammoth effort was commemorated on film.

For the first time in an African event, every finisher had a personalised 60-second video made of their run by Ballito-based Peter Hooper and his Data Republic/Fanwish team. The videos were made possible via Cell C sponsorship.

With cameramen placed at around 60km (two-thirds) and the finish line of the route, two of the biggest race milestones were captured. Combined with generic video content and proprietary software to sift through and organise all the footage, Hooper and his team created 18 194 unique videos which were ready for download within 72 hours of the race.

“It was important for us to introduce this into the world’s best Ultra Marathon, the Comrades Marathon. It took three years of applying our technology and testing and we are very happy with how the process went,” said Hooper.

The idea of individual running videos had been with Hooper since his own Comrades finish in 1993 and it took over 30 years for the technology to catch up.

“Everybody wants to see themselves crossing the finish line on TV. The problem was, there was no TV coverage in 1993 because the SABC was on strike,” he said.

“It became my mission to one day provide every runner with personalised footage of them finishing the race,” he said.

Hooper worked a variety of different jobs in the interim years, mostly linked to his passion for sport and videography. Around five years ago, he began to research the video technology needed for the Comrades coverage.

“Our biggest concern throughout the process was the regular power outages on the North Coast. For our system to work, the footage needs to be uploaded continuously so that timestamps can be matched to runner numbers.”

“If that gets thrown out because the stream is broken, then the whole process will collapse.”

It went off as flawlessly as could be hoped however, and now Hooper is hoping to introduce the system to other major events, including the Two Oceans Marathon and the Mumbai Marathon, which includes 65 000 runners.

To see the videos, visit myvideo.comrades.com/iSKTdPl or scan the QR code.

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