‘I refuse to be old’: The 81-year-old runner who became a South African celebrity

NEW YORK – On June 11, Maros Mosehla lined up with 16,000 other runners on the starting line of the Comrades, a 56-mile (90.1km) race that began outside the red brick City Hall in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

Mosehla, a wispy runner at 1.57m tall, did not stand out from the crowd of athletes who had gathered to run just farther than the equivalent of two marathons through the misty winter morning.

But by the time Mosehla, a builder by profession, crossed the Comrades finish line in the city of Durban 9hr 26min later, he had done something extraordinary.

At 81, he became the oldest person to complete the race in its 102-year history, shattering a record that had stood for more than three decades – the previous record holder competed at 80.

Perhaps even more jaw-dropping was the fact that he had finished ahead of more than two-thirds of the runners, 95 per cent of whom were more than 20 years younger than him.

In ultra-running, a sport that rewards mental fortitude and prudent pacing over absolute speed, octogenarian athletes are not completely unheard of.

In March, for instance, five runners older than 80 competed at the USA Track & Field 100 mile championship in Nevada.

“It’s phenomenal, but it’s not totally improbable,” said Shona Hendricks, a South African sports scientist and ultra-running coach.

With well-considered strength training, lots of recovery time and “choosing your parents wisely”, that is, having good genetics, some runners are still capable of completing these kinds of bruising distances well into their retirement years, she said.

But even among that rarefied bunch, Mosehla cuts a distinct profile. He qualified for the Comrades with a standard marathon time of 3:51 – 40 minutes faster than the global average for anyone of any age. And at the 2023 Comrades, he ran at a pace of nearly 9.7kmh – speedier than more than 10,000 of the race’s 15,000 finishers.

“People ask me why I refuse to be old,” he said. He has outlived two wives, two of his 17 children and most of his childhood friends. But he still takes on construction jobs and goes running three times a week. “When you run, you stay young,” he added.

Outside his home, a breeze tinkled what sounded like a huge wind chime. But it was, in fact, his more than 300 race medals, which he had strung up on his laundry line.

Mosehla grew up and still lives in the village of Ga-Mogashoa, in South Africa’s rural north-east. The youngest of six children, he was born at home and spent his childhood tending cattle.

In 1959, when he was 17, Mosehla asked his father if he could go to school. In his village, there was no school, so he walked 8km to the nearest one, where he began kindergarten at the age of 18.

As he studied, he also worked in construction on the side to pay his school fees and support his family.

It was also at this time that he began to run, first in local cross-country meets and later representing his bantustan, an apartheid-era territory set up for black ethnic groups by South Africa’s government.

But the situation was far from idyllic. In 1981, Mosehla was leading a marathon in the city of Pietersburg (now Polokwane) when a white race marshal purposely directed him to take a wrong turn.

He figured it out in time to sprint back and still won the race, but said that “I was so angry that I declined to take the prize”.

A couple of years later, busy with work and the demands of life as a new husband and father, Mosehla stopped racing altogether.

He did not take up running formally again until 2003, when he was 61. By then, the Comrades had already attracted between 15,000 and 20,000 runners a year, tens of thousands of spectators and large TV audiences.

In 2006, he signed up for the race, and finished in 8:19.

“One thing I love about Comrades is that, on that day, people are focused on the same thing – they have the same spirit,” he said.

Except, for some runners, there was one major difference.

“I’m half his age, and he still beats me,” said Thabana Mokgohloa, 41, who runs for the Polokwane Athletic Club with Mosehla and finished the Comrades about 20 minutes behind the 81-year-old in 2023. NYTIMES