DAVID ISAACSON | Meeting up with old Comrade was one of many highlights

It had to happen eventually, I guess, me reporting on a Comrades Marathon.

And what a race the 2023 edition turned out to be for a reporter on his maiden assignment at the ultra-marathon, with Tete Dijana and Gerda Steyn smashing the men’s and women’s Down run best times.

But what made my weekend trip to Durban particularly memorable was that I got to hook up with a former colleague, Larry Lombaard, one of the great characters of past news rooms.

He was an old hand at the Comrades, reporting on many of them, including the famous 1989 race when Frith van der Merwe finished 15th overall while setting the best Down time that Steyn just broke. Larry also ran the ultra on seven occasions, which was no surprise considering he was also a top triathlete in his day, when the sport featured canoeing instead of swimming.

In 2000 he reported on the Comrades for the SA Press Association (Sapa) while running the race, finishing in 11hr 34 min 25 sec.

Running with the number 1828, Larry ran his first in 1974 and picked up two silvers in 1981 and 1982.

Larry joined Sapa in 1998 and he and I covered the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur for Sapa that year.

That trip was the first time many of the South African press corps had encountered email and internet. In fairness to the Games organisers they filled up the conference hall at the media hotel with personal computers, all linked to the internet.

The few of us who had used email before helped others create Yahoo email addresses.

The internet connection there was solid, but at the various venues it was a different story and we all struggled to file copy on the fly.

Larry was no fan of this new technology. One night in the media room, amid the quiet ticking of keyboards, we suddenly heard what sounded like gunshots; a Sri Lankan journalist was banging away at a typewriter.

Larry went over to the foreign colleague and asked if he could touch his machine to pay homage to a technology that never let him down.

As a sports journalist Larry’s description of action — whether in a boxing bout, on a rugby field, or even at the athletics stadium — was prose at its best, poetic at times and always infused with passion and fact as he reported on some of the greatest moments in South African sports history. 

He wrote like a Nobel laureate while speaking like a proud product of Benoni.

I was fortunate to have Larry not only as a mentor, but also as a friend. 

It was almost impossible not to like him.

He was once covering a women’s amateur golf tournament when he noticed his teenage son and his friend, who had accompanied him to the course, being chased by a really angry golfer.

It turned out that his child Gavin and his mate, for a bit of a laugh, had been hiding in foliage waiting for an errant shot. The pranksters found her golf ball and switched it for a ping pong ball.

The golfer was not overly amused and when she spotted the two mischief-makers she gave chase. 

Larry stepped in to face the lady’s wrath and within minutes he had calmed her down and had her smiling. He had made another friend.

Then again, there was that one time Larry forgot to suppress that East Rand instinct while we were exploring Hong Kong on our way to the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

We got a bit lost and Larry went into a store to ask for directions. The shopkeeper happily explained where we needed to go and when he was finished, Larry replied: “Thanks, china.”

The man behind the counter shot him a dirty look and Larry beat a sheepish retreat, chuckling at his gaffe.

On trips abroad — and Larry went on many — he always took his bicycle and he saw foreign cities in far greater detail than most of us did from buses and taxis. 

Among Larry’s many skills was amateur kinesiology, which he practised with painful effectiveness on his colleagues.

If any journo was struggling with a sore muscle, Larry would isolate the problem and then dig his elbow or thumbs deep into the muscle. It was excruciating, but he hit the spot every time.

Larry’s career ended suddenly after he was found badly injured in a road in 2005. At the time it was assumed he was the victim of a hit and run, though there were also rumours that it was related to a story he had been working on.

Nearly 20 years later and nobody knows for sure what happened, but Larry was left with permanent physical and brain damage that left him unable to work.

I visited him in hospital and saw him a couple of times afterwards, but we lost contact until I found out he had moved to Ballito, where he’s staying with Gavin.

The Comrades trip presented an opportunity for myself and Sarel van der Walt, another colleague who was with us in Malaysia, Australia and at the 2004 Athens Olympics, to meet up with Larry again.

Larry, who turned 70 earlier this year, still possessed his old humour. Gavin dropped Larry off and gave us a quick list of dos and dont’s for Larry.

“I’m like a child,” Larry said, leaving a slight pause before adding: “Again.”

That’s exactly how he delivered jokes before the accident. And he still possesses the ability to tell a yarn, even if his memory lets him down occasionally.

But there were some things he remembered clearly, and one of them was the Comrades.

“I’ve covered four Olympics,” Larry told us, “but the greatest race I’ve ever covered was Frith van der Merwe winning the Comrades in 1989.”

It’s been nearly two decades since Larry last penned sport, yet I had to think it was a pity he wasn’t able to write on the incredible athletic feats at Comrades on Sunday.

The race was poorer without him.