Irvette van Zyl buries Olympic marathon demons after 12 hard years

Irvette van Zyl finally finished her Olympic marathon odyssey in Paris on Sunday after 12 years, crying in relief after three previous failed campaigns.

She crossed the line placed 37th in 2hr 31min 14sec, the second South African home behind Cian Oldknow, 32nd in 2:30:51.

Comrades and Two Oceans queen Gerda Steyn, also the national marathon record-holder, was 45th in 2:32:51.

Team South Africa’s Paris Games officially ended soon afterwards with the defeat of wrestler Steyn de Lange in the repechage of the 97kg freestyle division.

Sifan Hassan of Netherlands won the women’s marathon in a sprint finish, clocking a 2:22:55 Olympic record after edging Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa by three seconds.

Behind them the South Africans fought their own battles.

“Twelve years, it took me 12 years, said Van Zyl, 37. “I think it’s a PB [personal best] for anyone,” she joked.

“It feels so good, maybe I’ll come back to LA [Los Angeles 2028, the next Olympics]. It feels better to finish than not to finish, I must say …

“I’m so grateful, I almost quit my career for this,” she recalled, her voice breaking.

At London 2012 she pulled up in the race with an Achilles injury and at Rio 2016 she was unable to start because of a stress fracture. At Tokyo 2020 she passed out on the route.

She carried that past with her in Paris. 

“It’s just fighting the demons in my head the whole time, so I think that’s the hardest part of completing a marathon you weren’t able to do over the years for so long.

“So ja, I think just being able to fight the demons all the way and just take it as comfortable as possible and just not try to over-heat.”

Van Zyl said she liked the hills which troubled so many other athletes.

“I enjoyed the hills,” said Van Zyl, the Soweto Marathon champion. “There was that other hill, there’s no hill like that in South Africa though — that was a surprise — but I caught quite a few ladies there.

“But then I’m not that good downhill, so they caught me again on downhill. So if there were more hills it would probably be better for me…

“But I’m so happy, it doesn’t matter what the route was, I finished.”

Steyn, 34, did not believe racing the Comrades Marathon from Durban to Pietermaritzburg eight weeks ago, when she improved her own best time for the Up run, had affected her performance.

“I didn’t think it was at all an after-effect,” said Steyn, who also lowered her own Two Oceans mark earlier this year. “I felt really good during my training, my training was really as good as ever so I wouldn’t say at all it had an effect.

“I just think that it was one of those days. I perhaps might be coming down with something, you just don’t know what went on.

“Perhaps it was just a little bit overwhelming but I’m sure with time I will work it all out and know how to build on that in the future.”

Steyn, who had been hoping to improve on the 15th spot she achieved at Tokyo 2020, said she had been off-colour from the start. 

“I just felt a little bit flat from the gun-go and I thought I’d be able to work through it.”

She had hoped to fight back on the hills, normally her comfort zone.

“But I just couldn't really get into my real rhythm feeling like myself. However it didn’t put such a shadow on the experience.”

For 27-year-old Oldknow, Paris was only her second marathon abroad, having qualifying for the Olympics in her international debut in Seville in February.

“I definitely learned a lot today. Championship racing is definitely different to a race where you're going for time like Seville [where] I had a strict pacing plan because we were going for a specific time.

“Today was a rough guideline of what I want to do, but also more on my feel. So I think I learned a lot about that feeling today and also just what an amazing feeling it is.”