DURBAN. ‘Runner,’ Sergio Motsoeneng, who was this week disqualified from the Comrades Marathon for the second time, has appealed to fellow runners to let him know how they make it to the finish line without cheating. “It’s 90 kilometers,” he said. “Surely they don’t all run that far?”
In 1999 Motsoeneng and his twin brother were stripped of their medals and prize money after it was discovered that they had run the epic race as a relay. At the time the brothers said they had cheated in order to help their family, who reportedly enjoyed public humiliation and ridicule.
Motsoeneng returned to the race in 2010 having served his ban and finished strongly in third place, only for it to be revealed this week that he had failed a drug test.
Motsoeneng has reportedly appealed against the ban saying that while this time he had run the race all by himself, it was his brother who had supplied the tainted urine.
A spokesperson for the family, Quickstep Dladla, who described the twins as a inseparable, said Sergio was trying to phase out his brother’s involvement in the race. “He really didn’t think there would be any harm in letting him do the urine test,” he said.
Dladla went on to say he thought Motsoeneng was being treated harshly. “Pietermaritzburg to Durban is a long way,” he said. “Even by taxi it’s an arduous journey.”
Dladla appealed to the public to embrace Motsoeneng as a entertainer and not a runner.
“Let’s be honest,” he said, “Comrades doesn’t exactly make for good TV.
“It’s just a whole lot of people in dodgy shorts running up a very long hill for a very long time.”
He said having Motsoeneng in the race provided an element of intrigue and he urged more participants to get into the spirit of the day.
“It’s a long day and there are a lot of cameras,” he said. “It would make for better viewing if more runners tried to cheat the system – or at least if more runners did more than just run.
He said that every show needed a bad guy to boost ratings and that Motsoeneng had now firmly established himself as the JR Ewing of The Comrades.
Motsoeneng could not be reached for comment but Dladla said the runner was likely to turn his attentions to cycling. “They are much more tolerant of cheating there,” he said.
