'Records are meant to be broken': Frith congratulates Gerda on Down mark
Image: gsport4girls
Frith van der Merwe breathed a sigh of relief at hearing the news that Gerda Steyn had broken her 34-year-old Comrades Marathon mark on Sunday morning.
The Benoni-based English teacher was unable to watch the end of the race after load-shedding kicked in at 10am, but she was impressed with Steyn’s 5 hrs 44 min 54 sec blitz from Pietermaritzburg to Durban.
“That’s excellent,” said Van der Merwe, Van der Merwe, who clocked 5:54:32 on the Down run in 1989. “Well done to Gerda. It was a privilege holding the record and I’m really pleased she was the one to take it. She’s really nice.
“And I like being out of the limelight,” she said, joking she was getting too old to appear in TV interviews.
TimesLIVE
Support independent journalism by subscribing to the Sunday Times. Just R20 for the first month.