Caroline Wöstmann makes history in Comrades marathon
Two women athletes from Pretoria made history when they finished in the top two spots in this year's Comrades Marathon.
Caroline Wöstmann, the running lecturer from Pretoria made history on Sunday in Pietermaritzburg when she won the Comrades Marathon for women in 06:12:22.
Yet another Pretoria athlete, Charné Bosman, further fed the historical performance when she finished in second place in 06:33:24.
Wöstmann and Bosman are training partners and they run in the colours of the Nedbank Running Club. Both are coached by famous Lindsay Parry of the Tuks High Performance Centre (hpc).
The two local women’s performance means they are the first two South African women to finish in the first two places in this world famous and gruelling ultra-marathon since 1992. In the process Wöstmann and Bosman showed a clean pair of heels to the famous Russian twins, Oelysa and Elena Nurgalieva, who dominated the race over the past decade. Elena Nurgalieva is the record holder for the up-race from Durban to Pietermaritzburg, which was run this year again. She has won the race eight times since 2003. The twins eventually finished third and fourth, with Elena just ahead of her twin sister Olesya.
Wöstmann ran a brilliant race and she even beat many top men athletes. She finished among the top 25 athletes overall.
With this performance Wöstmann became only the fifth athlete in history to win South Africas two most famous ultra-marathons, the Comrades and the Two Oceans, in the same year. In April this year she was also the first South African woman to win the Two Oceans since 2001.
It appears the 2015 Comrades was intended as a race for the history books. The mens race was won by Gift Kelehe. His brother, Andrew, won the famous race in 2001. This means the Kelehe brothers became the first set of brothers who both could win this race.
Do you have more information about the story? Please send us an email to editorial@rekord.co.za or phone us on 072 435 7717.
For free breaking and community news, visit Rekord’s websites:
For more news and interesting articles, like Rekord on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
- We have exciting news! We’re offering a free alert to help you always be in the loop. Send an email with the word ‘Subscribe’ to breakingnews@rekord.co.za to receive your free daily breaking news update.
