Pretoria North grandmaster athlete amazes experts with his achievements
The remarkable achievements of a grandmaster athlete from Pretoria North are proof that it is never too late to pursue one's dream.
Nearly five years ago, Dawid Maphangulo was already on the wrong side of 60 and a hard-working factotum who happened to be employed by the owners of a block of flats in Pretoria North where one of the coaches of the well-known Fortis North athletics club lived.
Although he was briefly exposed to athletics decades ago as a school boy, he never really had the opportunity to officially participate in any races.
However, the Fortis North coach, Carol Goodinson, noted that this friendly factotum was super-fit for his age when she regularly saw him jogging in the street when he was going to a grocery store.
Goodinson invited Maphangulo to join her club and he immediately accepted the invitation. As the saying goes, the rest is history. Today Maphangulo is an award-winning grandmasters athlete and multiple South African cross-country champion.
He almost immediately started winning races in his age group as a grandmaster athlete at local level, but over the past two years he has also made his mark nationally.
Since he was crowned Gauteng North cross-country champion in 2016, he has already won several other titles.
In the past year this remarkable grandmaster (65+) athlete has been crowned as South African cross-country champion (6km), South African 10km champion and South African 21km champion. On a higher level, he is also the current Southern Regions cross country champion.
In all these divisions he runs world-class times.
Maphangulo’s remarkable athletics career is also proof of how sport can open doors to people at other levels in life.
He was born in Wallmansthal and later grew up in Soshanguve. After leaving school as a 17-year-old, he went to work for a cattle farmer near Hammanskraal and later he was employed for many years by a well-known bakery in the west of Pretoria. After retirement at the bakery, however, he had to keep working and so he ended up as factotum in Pretoria North.
In all these years he never had the opportunity to travel outside the boundaries of the current Tshwane metro.
However, his newly-found athletics career gave Maphangulo the opportunity to see the sea for the first time at the age of 63, when he travelled to Port Elizabeth with the Gauteng North cross-country team for the South African Championship a few years ago.
Meanwhile, he has already seen some other regions of South Africa, but now he also dreams of participating overseas or elsewhere in Africa.
He also wants to take on longer distances soon and believes he still has enough strength in his legs for the half marathon or marathon.
At the age of 65, Dawid Maphangulo enjoys his new life as a leading athlete and one of the Fortis North club’s most popular members, while continuing to dream of showing his mettle in the colours of the national team soon.
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