Nine-time Comrades champion Bruce Fordyce.
- Nine-time Comrades champion, Bruce Fordyce, regaled how he zealously took salt tablets to get through his first race, a method used by the immortal 1974 British & Irish Lions as they swept the Springboks aside.
- The 64-year-old legend admitted how he’s always been on the lookout for different nutritional approaches before competing in the race.
- 2020’s Comrades Marathon, which would’ve taken place on Sunday, has been cancelled for the first time since World War Two due to Covid-19.
Bruce Fordyce admits that he “caught the wave of every craze” with regards to nutrition when it came to the Comrades Marathon, but he still remembers fondly how the British & Irish Lions’ example inspired him before his inaugural race back in 1977.
With this year’s edition of the famous ultra-marathon – which would’ve taken place on Sunday – being cancelled for the first time since World War Two due to the Covid-19 pandemic, nostalgia has, understandably, been prominent this past week.
Appropriately, given that the Lions will be back on South African shores next year, Willie John McBride’s ‘immortals’ of 1974 were a major influence in Fordyce’s initial march towards dominating the annual race.
“In 2021, we have a wonderful thing in rugby to look forward to: the world champion Springboks taking on the British Lions,” he told a Wits Sport webinar.
“In 1976/77, we, as a rugby-loving nation, were just getting over the biggest klap we ever took in our lives. Willie John McBride’s team had hammered us 3-0 and it could’ve been 4-0 had there been a TMO in those years. They won every provincial game too. Anyway, they did something interesting.”
Nutrition has always been at the forefront of Fordyce’s preparation for the race, yet his initial stab was particularly notable because of what he felt he needed to prove as well as the “combination of factors” that pushed him to compete in the first place.
He noted that after an old boys rugby game at Woodmead High he was “horrified to discover how unfit I was” and also wanted to determine if there was “something I could master”.
If that wasn’t enough, a shiny token of a fellow runner at a campus residence proved the kicker.
“I met Jean Leger, who had run Comrades the year before (1976) and his glittering silver medal just pushed all my right buttons,” said the record nine-time champion.
“I wanted one myself.”
But before the now 64-year-old could harbour ambitions of glory, he first needed to find ways to complete his first race.
And for that, he turned to the Lions’ trump card: salt tablets.
“One of the things they did, because they were so frightened of the African sun, was take salt tablets,” said Fordyce.
“They believed that they would cramp in our heat. So that filtered into running circles afterwards. When I ran my first race, you simply had to swallow salt tablets.”
He would eventually finish a creditable 43rd as a 12-year period of unprecedented success followed thereafter.
– Compiled by Heinz Schenk
