Local athlete wins famous Trail Challenge
A physiotherapist from Laudium in Pretoria made his fellow members at the Jacaranda Athletics Club proud when he won this year's Otter Challenge Trail Run in the Southern Cape.
The route of the famous Otter Trail Run and Otter Trail Challenge is considered one of the most difficult in this popular and growing sport in South Africa, as athletes have to face very rough terrain, steep rocks and in some places also the ocean.
These two races, of which the 2020 version recently took place in the Knysna area, annually attract only the bravest among the trail runners. While the professional athletes battle it out in the Trail Run, the adventurous amateurs enter the Challenge.
To the great joy and pride of the Jacaranda Athletics Club in Laudium, Pretoria, one of their own stalwarts finished as winner in the Otter Trail Challenge this year.
Abdullah Hoosen a physiotherapist from Laudium, won the open section of the Otter Challenge in a time of 5:50,57.
This achievement is undoubtedly the highlight of Hoosen’s career as an athlete so far. He told Rekord that he had already started participating in road races as a schoolboy and in his first year as a student he also completed his first Comrades marathon.
Photo: Supplied
This was followed by three more successful attempts in the Comrades ultra-marathon, while he also completed the Two Oceans ultra-marathon four times.
In addition, he is also an avid triathlete, who already completed his first Ironman Challenge in 2018.
As a cyclist, this father of three has completed the 94.7 race more than ten times, while he also excelled on the football and cricket field in his younger years.
However, Hoosen immediately fell in love with Trail Running when he was introduced to it a few years ago. Last year he was 13th in his first Otter Challenge, while also completing the difficult Mont-aux-Sources Challenge in the Drakensberg in Kwazulu-Natal.
He loves new challenges and the famous Sky Run in Lady Gray in the Eastern Cape is one of the trail runs he definitely wants to tackle in the future.
Hoosen told Rekord that he surprised himself with his performance in this year’s Otter Challenge, as the national lockdown period had a major impact on his training program. There was a long period during which he basically could not train at all and that is why he is so much prouder of his achievement in this year’s Otter Challenge.
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