'We don't put all our eggs in one basket' - Nedbank dominate Biogen 21K signalling intentions for 2025 road running season
The Nedbank Running Club signalled their intentions for the road running season ahead with a dominant display at the first big race of 2025. The Green Machine dominated yesterday's (12 January) Biogen 21K hosted by the Bedfordview Athletics Club taking nine of the twenty top ten positions - six in the women’s race and three in the men's race which was won by Nedbank's Namakoe Nkhasi. Lesotho's half marathon national record holder out sprinted his countryman Jobo Khatoane (1:05:59) and third placed Bennet Seloyi (1:06:00) to stop the clock in 1:05:53. Coached by the legendary Michael ’Sponge’ Seme, Nkhasi praised his training group which includes the legendary Stephen Mokoka.
"My training has gone well. Working with The Sponge Group has allowed me to progress. I have learnt a lot from Stephen about training. I also hope that he has learnt something from us. You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great," said the man who celebrated his 32nd birthday on Friday 10 January.
Nkhasi who represented Lesotho over 5000m at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio and is the holder of a 1:01:00 21km best, dispatched a quality field including defending champion and reigning Totalsports Two Oceans and Soweto Marathon champion Onnalenna Khonkhobe who finished in fourteenth position (1:08:56). Nedbank Running Club national manager Nick Bester was pleased with his team’s showing emphasising that this is but the beginning of a long season where the main focus will once again be on dominating the big marathons and ultra marathons with the Comrades Marathon top of that list.
"The support that you need to perform well at a race like Comrades is huge. You can't win a race like Comrades if you haven't got the support. We’ve got great coaches and great development. We usually have six Comrades pre-Comrades camps happening around South Africa before the race. We've got one in Dullstroom, then we've got Pio Mpolokeng with the Khonkhobe brothers in Klerksdorp, Mthandeni Nene in Pietermaritzburg, one in Cape Town and others. So we make sure that we don't put all of our eggs in one basket and that is how you create the atmosphere where you are quite sure that you are going to win the race. This wouldn’t be possible without a Nedbank and the co-sponsors we've got like Nike who give away a huge amount of shoes and others like Biogen. So I’m confident."
Victory in the women’s race went to reigning Africanbank Soweto Marathon champion Neheng Khatala who made sure that both races were won by athletes from The Mountain Kingdom. The Hollywood Athletics Club top runner was without equal as she crossed the finish line in 1:17:06 which was more than two minutes ahead of runner-up Nthabiseng Letokoto of Maxed Elite (1:19:48) and a whopping ten minutes before Nedbank’s Shanice Peens completed the hilly half marathon in 1:27:05.
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