As soon as athletes stepped off the course, it was back to normal life in South Africa. Jose left his running club in the early 80s after the chairperson allegedly called him by a racial slur. He might have been allowed in white areas while he was running a marathon. But the rest of the time, he could be arrested if he didn't have the correct stamps in his past book.
If you live in South Africa, you definitely know someone who runs ultra-marathons, probably lots of someones. Here, ultras are the stuff of a whole country’s new years resolutions and mid-life crises. They’re the kind of thing that a totally ordinary, not-athletic person wakes up one day and decides they’re going to do -- and then does. In one of the most economically unequal countries in the world, extreme distance running is a sport that feels like it includes everybody. And improbably, that inclusiveness happened during one of the darkest, most divided moments in South Africa’s history – during the final years of apartheid.
The Comrades