I have always thought that the Comrades Marathon is a unique, one of a kind event, in the world. I am bias, because I have run three Comrades, and I in fact have photographs of me as a 10 year old applauding Bruce Fordyce at the Comrades finish, so it is something that has always been in my blood.

The coverage has unfortunately been shocking over the years, and particularly from a commentary point of view. I thought this year’s commentary team was much better, but unfortunately there is still an obsession, particularly with Ian Laxton, to always talk about a record. They hype up a new record every year so much that they detract from the event itself, when a record is not established.

The event is run every year, either up or down, and in the circumstances there are only two records, and they cannot be broken every year. In any event, this obsession of theirs is also somewhat false, because on a stinking hot day you could run the best run of all time, but not get a record, just because of the weather circumstances and people forget that the route undergoes a number of minor changes every year which may take out a 200 metre hill this year and put it back in the next etc, and the distance of the event has ranged by as much as 3 kilometres from the shortest distance to the longest distance run and while it is pretty much the same each year, the weather conditions certainly are not. I can say with confidence that I belive one should never say never, but we are not going to see another man win an event like this 9 times like Bruce Fordyce did.