R600m economic boost expected from Comrades Marathon

The oldest and biggest ultra-marathon worldwide, the Comrades Marathon, is set to be bigger and better than last year.

This year’s down-run from Pietermaritzburg to Durban has attracted a record-breaking 24 000 runners.

The previous down-run in 2018 attracted 19 047 runners. Chief Operations Officer of the KwaZulu-Natal Tourism and Film Authority, Jackie Motsepe, says the economic spinoffs will greatly benefit businesses in the tourism and hospitality industries.

“The hotels are fully booked whether in Durban or Pietermaritzburg. We are expecting 24 000 runners at the start line. In terms of the economic impact, we are expecting this race to have over R600m impact on the economy,” says Motsepe.

Motsepe says 1 800 jobs are going to be created.

“From the continent, we are expecting at least 1 283 runners and over 3 000 international runners.”

Comrades Marathon Association General Manager, Alain Dalais says this year’s race will be a dry run for the 100th Comrades to be run in 2027.

He says with the 24 000 entries; they have the biggest field of runners ever on a down run from Pietermaritzburg to Durban.

Dalais says with safety in mind, they have made a number of changes. This includes splitting the race into two start times according to seeding batches: the first at 5:45am and the second at 6am.

The number of runners in the first starting group has been capped at 14 000.

Dalais says some of the start-line traditions will be repeated for the second group to make the start of the race special for them as well.

“Once group one has the starting gun goes off at 5:45 am, and group 1 moves forward. When group 2 proceeds to the start line, there will be Chariots of Fire again and Max Trimborne’s cock crow so it will be a shortened version,” says Dalais.

“The other introduction that we’ve done at the start as well, is that we’ll have the speaker towers all the way until the back of S batch,” he adds.

Dalais says this year’s race was planned with runners in mind, to give them a better experience. This includes the first street finish since the early days of the race in 1921.

Runners will now finish in Masabalala Yengwa Avenue opposite Durban’s People’s Park, where spectators will be able to line the sidewalk to cheer runners on.

“Because of it being a street finish on the actual tar road surface we’re going to have an astro-turf mat that will be before the finish line and after the finish line. We know with the Comrades Marathon, especially in the last two to three hours, we have lots of runners that collapse, crawl and fall, so we’ve introduced that so that runners that do happen to fall or crawl will be able to do that on a soft surface and not on the actual road surface.” says Yengwa.