South Africa's Comrades

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South Africa began to experiment with integrating domestic sports in the early 1970s. In 1974, Matsalane Mamobolo's uncle became the first black athlete to win an integrated national championship. "Because of that, the whole country started shifting towards, let's open up to the black people," she says.

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