Wostmann wants to cut it short

02 July 2015 - 02:06 By David Isaacson

Superwoman Caroline Wostmann, the reigning Comrades and Two Oceans champion, is dropping her distance as she aims to qualify for the Olympics next year. "She has an inferiority complex about her speed," her coach, Lindsey Parry, said yesterday. "That's what we're working on."Wostmann will run the New York Marathon in November and if that goes well, she'll look at qualifying at a marathon in Europe in April."That means we'll keep her away from ultra-marathons this year. If she does qualify then she won't do Comrades either."The norm in athletics is that runners graduate to longer distances, but Wostmann, who took up running in 2008 to lose weight, is going in the other direction.Her marathon best stands at 2:44.00, not far outside the Olympic qualifying standard of 2:42.00, but quite a distance from the sub-2:30.00 Parry believes she will need to achieve to be among the three SA marathoners on the team.A country can enter a maximum of three competitors in an Olympic track and field event, and so far this year SA already has four women inside the Olympic mark - not including pregnant Irvette van Zyl, who boasts a personal best of 2:31.26.Mapaseka Makhanya has a time of 2:31.02 and Rene Kalmer 2:33.21.Christine Kalmer (2:39.16) and Tanith Maxwell (2:39.43) are also inside the criterion.Parry is confident Wostmann can go substantially faster - her current marathon best works out to an average speed of 3 minutes 53 seconds per kilometre, and she needs to get down to faster than 3:33min/km...

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