Gerda Steyn has two options for rare Comrades Up-Down pairing triumph

Should defending Comrades champions Gerda Steyn and Piet Wiersma emerge victorious again on Sunday, they will become the first women’s and men’s pair to claim Up and Down crowns together since 2011.

The feat has been achieved only on four occasions, probably reduced by the fact that women were allowed to enter officially only from 1975.

Two years after that the first pairing claimed the double, with Germiston Callies Harriers runners Alan Robb and Lettie van Zyl going Down-Up-Down in 1976, 1977 and 1978.

Robb, a four-time winner of the Comrades, owns the record for most gold medals, awarded to top 10 finishers, with 12, one ahead of Bruce Fordyce.

Fordyce, winner of a record nine Comrade titles — eight of them in a row from 1981 to 1988 — achieved the Up-Down feat with two women over five consecutive years.

The University of Witwatersrand star first did it with Lindsay Wright, from the University of Cape Town, in 1983 and 1984, and did it in triplicate with Helen Lucre of Hillcrest Villagers in 1985, 1986 and 1987.

It took 24 years for the next double, achieved for the first time by two foreigners, Zimbabwean Stephen Muzhingi and Russian Elena Nurgalieva, who went Down-Up in 2010 and 2011.

Nurgalieva’s 13 gold medals, achieved from 2003 to 2015, is the most by a woman. 

Wiersma of the Netherlands is bidding to become the 14th man in Comrades history to win Up and Down races while Tete Dijana, his Nedbank club teammate and the winner of the last two Down editions in 2023 and 2022, is aiming to become the 11th man to win three titles.

If Dijana is successful, he will join Belarus-born Vladimir Kotov as the only men to have three Comrades titles in only one direction. Kotov claimed three successive Up crowns in 2000, 2002 and 2004.

Dijana holds the best time for the Down race, having clocked 5hr 13min 58sec in 2023. But Wiersma is the second fastest, having finished only three seconds behind in that race, his Comrades debut.

The 35-year-old Steyn, the overwhelming women’s favourite, is looking to secure her fourth Comrades triumph, having won in 2019, 2023 and 2024, a feat that will see her join Maureen Holland as the second most prolific female victor.

Holland claimed her four wins unofficially in 1966, 1971, 1972 and 1973. 

Hollywood runner Steyn, who has five gold medals in total after finishing second in 2018 and fourth in 2017, could also achieve an Up-Down pairing feat if Edward Mothibi, the 2019 Up champion, were to win the men’s race on Sunday.

If that were to transpire, that would be the first man-woman Up-Down double achieved outside consecutive years.