Summit Vision

By graeme fraser

Summit Vision captures the lessons learned and experiences enjoyed by Graeme Fraser (then a 45 year corporate lawyer) as he undertook the daunting "Challenge" of completing five major endurance events in South Africa in the year 2000.

What started as a casual discussion about how to celebrate the advent of the new Millennium, became a life-changing series of events. In a single year Graeme took on the Dusi Canoe Marathon (3 day kayak race over tortuous terrain along the Umsindusi and Umgeni Rivers), the Midmar Mile (the biggest open-water swim event in the world - across a major dam), the Cape Argus Cycle Tour (the world's biggest timed cycle race over 109 kilometres around the Cape Peninsula), the world famous Comrades Marathon (run between Durban and Pietermaritzburg covering 90kms) and an ascent to Uhuru Peak on Mount Kilimanjaro

Each event has a reputation for testing the endurance of the participants to the utmost. Graeme's challenge was to do all 5 events in one year!

Readers will learn how Graeme (a novice in all the events) convinced himself (and 34 others) to attain this unique achievement which many ridiculed as being impossible. He describes not only the 10 major life lessons he learned, but also gives practical tips and techniques for tackling each of the five events in the Millennium Big 5 Challenge - which can be applied to undertaking any challenge life sets for you. Even writing a book!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Millennium Big 5 Challenge 2025 (Pty) Ld
• Release date: Mar 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224212187

Book preview

By

Graeme Fraser

BA LLB LLM HDip Tax

Millennium Big 5

Challenge 2025

Publishing

Millennium Big 5

Challenge 2025

Publishing

© Millennium Big 5 Challenge 2025 (Pty) Ltd [2023]

Graeme Fraser and Vel Fraser - www. [e-mail]

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

First Published : 2023

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be used or reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form,

or by any manner or means whatsoever without the prior permission

in writing of Millennium Big 5 Challenge 2025 Publishing,

or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with

the appropriate reprographics rights organisation.

Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of

the above should be sent to the Rights Department

at the address above.

You must not circulate the book in any other binding or cover

and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer.

Front Cover, from Left to right - Andrew Walsh, Gina Blunt,

guide Chombo, Graeme Fraser and guide David.

ISBN Number 978-1-7764689-0-4

––––––––

About the Author

Graeme Fraser BA LLB LLM HDip Tax [Witwatersrand University], Corporate lawyer (for 43 years) who worked for corporate law firms Deneys Reitz and was a partner at Hofmeyr Van der Merwe; legal advisor for Santam Bank, Finans Bank and Nedbank who also acted as sole practitioner for over a decade and now lives and works with his wife Veldra. Graeme conceived, co-ordinated and completed the Nashua Millennium Big 5 Challenge in the year 2000.

Foreword by Veldra Fraser 

I thank the Lord God Almighty and Jesus the Saviour for my husband, Graeme. Reading his book Summit Vision  Graeme’s seamless inter-active side and his ability to sustain a competitive advantage is emphasized. It is by no stretch of the imagination to say that Graeme is very calculative, his ability to make accurate observations with skill for creating an interest and thoroughly seeing a matter through are particularly prominent - in fact, even outside the Millennium Big 5 Challenge frame! I would say this book is an excellent reading book as opposed to a coffee table paperback. In conclusion, Graeme’s affable nature leaves the reader in thorough enjoyment of his humorous side.. 

The title Summit Vision

Outstanding coaches, in order to goad enthusiasm constantly review not only the basics of sport but also the athlete’s humble beginnings. Any good athlete who executes the fundamentals of sport consistently, well knows that continuous practise is a major requirement in order to succeed. Athletes do not allow themselves boredom or impatience with the fitness regime, therefore attitude is significant however so is altitude.  And, this is where the title Summit Vision was birthed, within the scope of four of South Africa’s toughest  endurance races culminating in the ultimate No. 5 endurance event, successfully summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro - all in one year. The athletes were required to continually refine the basics of their sport, maintain their skills and practise more advanced skills - but it all narrowed down to the last compulsory event, keeping tabs on the altitude at the top how their thinking and support propelled them forward for each event - to know and maintain a Summit Vision [1 Peter 1:12].

Introduction

I have started writing this book more than once.

The original intention and also the original manuscript has been lost in changes of computers, homes and offices since those first attempts. What follows probably bears little resemblance to those previous efforts – and I may even have lost some excellent material in the process. That does not matter too much from my perspective as I still think that what I have managed to present has more than some merit and could be a worthwhile resource for others who attempt any of the events that made up the Nashua Millennium Big 5 Challenge or who are brave enough to tackle the Millennium Big 5 Challenge 2025 or who face other ‘challenges" in their lives!

There can only be a small number of few authors who can honestly say that from the time they started putting pen to paper (or as is the custom today, first began to work on the keyboard) they had an absolutely clear picture of where they were going, and more importantly managed to stick to their original concept without meandering or changing direction at least once or twice before they settled on the final product. That of course excludes the rewrites and changes that the author must endure at the hands of  editors working for their publishers. Since this book is self-published there was more control over this end of the process once the original draft was completed. Even so, my wife Veldra and I read and re-read the  rough copy numerous times and made the appropriate changes. Hopefully we’ve caught all the patent errors that are sometimes harder to detect than one can imagine.

I can tell you though, that getting into the habit of spending time each day or week writing a book (especially when you do not have the luxury of a capital base to support you during the time you indulge yourself) is not easy. As with many projects there are distractions and excuses can be easily made to do something else. And so, dear reader, if you become inspired by my adventure to consider recording your own endeavour’s, even as we begin the journey together, my advice is start soon and don’t be discouraged. Hopefully, some of the lessons in this book will help achieve that goal.

Most importantly the writing of this book spurred me to take the decision to repeat the Millennium Big 5 Challenge in 2025. In so doing it is my aim to introduce a whole new generation of athletes to the adventures the original Challengers experienced in 2000. I will therefore be distributing copies of this book to the attendees at the official launch of the Millennium Big 5 Challenge 2025 on 14 September 2023, and also to any athlete who decides to register for the Millennium Big 5 Challenge 2025 thereafter.

I have chosen to centre my own story on the lessons that I have learnt through developing, co-ordinating, participating in and most importantly completing the 2000 Challenge. This event is what I fondly tell the audiences who sometimes have to listen to me lecturing them on subjects such as The Basics of Drafting Contracts or who have the misfortune of attending the same social event as me and become engaged in the inevitable small talk that takes place there -

This is my claim to fame.

Others have from time to time expressed the thought that after spending an inordinate amount time (not because I didn’t pass my courses on time, but because I did so many) collecting law-related degrees, my claim to fame should have been something in the legal field, and they may even be right. Even though I have co-authored 23 law text-books since 2010 of which I am justifiably proud, the Challenge remains my claim to fame outside the legal field.

The passage of time always seems to cover the past with a special sense of what was good, better or even great. Just listen to any group reminiscing about their schooldays. Their teachers were always better than the current crop (though most pupils hated them at the time). The rugby team produced better results and of course school spirit was always at an all time high during the period they were at school. It seems that today just can’t compare, can it?

With that in mind I am conscious that some of the anecdotes I am going to tell may have been coloured by the passage of time. I hope not too much. I sincerely hope that I can successfully translate to you the lessons I have learnt about life through the 2000 Challenge. And talking of lessons, this book was initially marketed to the original Challengers under the working title Lessons from the Millennium Big 5 Challenge, and although the ten lessons are still at the core of this book, we trust that readers will discover why we finally settled on the title which Veldra suggested and I accepted namely - Summit Vision.

So what was the Nashua Millennium Big 5 Challenge and why do I base my claim for fame on it? 

Well, at one level it merely entailed me having to participate in and successfully complete all five of the following endurance events in the period from 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2000 (the Millennium year), namely :

The Dusi Canoe Marathon (which took place in January in that year);

The Midmar Mile Swim (which takes place on the second weekend in February each year);

The Cape Argus Cycle Tour (which is now known simply as the Cape Town Cycle Tour and usually takes place on the second weekend of March each year);

The Comrades Marathon (which took place on 16 June in the year 2000 but that clashed with the politically sensitive Youth Day public holiday and the race now appears to be scheduled for the second Sunday in June as long that is not 16 June); and

An ascent to Uhuru Peak on Mount Kilimanjaro (which we undertook in September in 2000. The date we reached the summit and thus completed the 2000 Challenge was 14 September.

So that the main thread of the story and the lessons learnt are not lost, I have largely dealt with the history of each event and the details of my participation in these events in separate chapters which I have placed at the end of the book, after I have dealt with the serious business of the 10 lessons!

The list of events of course begs the question : why this particular combination and why did I want to do them in the Millennium year?

To answer that question we need to start around December 1989. At this time I was a commercial law partner in a prominent Johannesburg law firm, Hofmeyr van der Merwe Inc (which the chairman, Billy van der Merwe used to describe as the largest Afrikaans dominated law firm in the whole universe! If you think about that statement long enough to some extent he was indeed correct. Earlier in my career I had been side-tracked into specializing in tax law as a requisite for a move from the firm where I had completed my articles into the project finance division of Santambank. When some enterprising international film-makers realized that the South African tax system lent itself to adaptation of film-financing techniques which had been used elsewhere, I found myself drawn into a sports and entertainment law practice. Not that this was entirely surprising.  I’d had a long involvement in amateur dramatics in different guises. In addition I had major contacts in the sports arena, being a first-league cricketer for well-known Johannesburg sports club, Old Edwardians and also serving at the time on what was then known as the Transvaal Cricket Board.

As 1989 drew to a close there was considerable speculation about what lay ahead for the final decade of the century and the end of the second Millennium. I was really fascinated about the possibility that those who would celebrate the transition from 31 December 1999 to 1 January 2000 would be experiencing not only two different years (which of course happens every year), but also two different decades (which happens every 10 years!), two different generations (which happens every 25 years or four times a century), two different centuries (which happens every 100 years!), and finally two different millennia – something that would not happen for at least another one thousand years. Even at this stage I wanted to know how people around the world would celebrate this transition.

When I arrived at the office to start working in 1990, I composed a letter to all my clients who were under the age of 40 and told them that this was our decade – what we did over the next ten years would not only shape the rest of our lives but could and should have a significant impact on the world around us.

(For younger readers – we wrote letters in those days because there was no form of social media).

What was our contribution to be?  I asked.

One of my clients at this time had started a group of companies called Starnet Entertainment which was formed to take advantage of the wave of motion picture projects which had mushroomed in South Africa as indicated earlier.

It is not important to go into an exhaustive exposition on this topic (although it was an extremely interesting period of my life as a whole), what is more important is to highlight the sense of energy and excitement that existed whenever this client and I met and planned business. We both had vision – and tons of it!! My client  could not resist contacting me on receipt of my letter, and we immediately decided that on his next trip to Johannesburg from Cape Town we would definitely set aside time to explore the opportunities. I cannot now remember who came up with the idea of holding a Millennium Concert at the Ellis Park Rugby Stadium (as it was then known) in Johannesburg but by the time we had spent a few hours together the concept had grown to four concerts, staged simultaneously in Cape Town (at Newlands), Durban (Kingsmead), Pretoria (Loftus Versveld) and Ellis Park. The performing artists would be shuttled by jet from one venue to another. In addition, we proposed, these stadiums could be linked with other venues around the world as they too were celebrating the advent of the new Millennium.

What was really radical about the whole idea was that we wanted to start selling the tickets in 1990! The reason? Well, it’s a case of simple mathematics and knowing the effect of compound interest on an investment. If you invested R 100 in 1990 and achieved a modest return of 15% per annum (which given the prevailing circumstances in South Africa at the time was not out of the ball park), by the year 2000 the initial investment would have grown to more than R 300. Sell a 100 000 tickets (which Ellis Park could easily hold) at say R 500 in 1990 and by 31 December 1999, you’d have about R 220million with which to stage one huge bash!

Of course if you multiply that amount by 4 because of the four different venues you can easily see how much could potentially have been generated by this project just from ticket sales, never mind the revenue from other income streams such as TV rights and recording rights.

If the project didn’t work out (remember at that time Nelson Mandela was still behind bars on Robben Island and the ANC (and other black political organisations) were not yet publicly talking to the Nationalist Government, not to mention there was a world-wide ban on international performers coming to South Africa) we would be prepared to guarantee to each ticketholder that they’d get their capital back plus interest at a nominal rate of 4% which is what the insurance companies at the time were illustrating as a minimum return on their policyholder’s funds). We worked furiously on doing a number of spreadsheet projections and each one confirmed that we were definitely on the right track.

That having been done, it was essential that we procured the rights to the various stadiums. The starting point was Ellis Park, the home of the Transvaal Rugby Union, but essentially the main stomping ground at the time of maverick businessman Louis Luyt. He has been described by others as a big man in more than one sense. Physically he cut an imposing figure – six foot plus a good couple of inches, a typical lock forward who captained the Orange Free State at provincial level in the 1950s. He was a self-made man having founded a fertilizer giant and had several other business interests.

Louis Luyt and his treasurer at the Transvaal Rugby Football Union, Mickey Gerber (who had himself played three test matches for the Springboks at full back between 1958 and 1961) were intrigued by our idea but could just not foresee (in 1990) how we were going to manage to get international artists to perform in stadiums on South African soil, given the climate at the time.

A few years later as I stood on the turf (or the matting placed on the ground to protect the turf beneath) of Ellis Park attending concerts by artists such Whitney Houston and Phil Collins I realised that, as with many ideas we had, we were simply way ahead of our time!

Moving on another few years to 1998, my business life was at a crossroads. Having trained as a lawyer I had turned my hand to being an entrepreneur trying to establish a diamond mining operation in Angola and also to create local wealth through an upmarket property development which involved converting an old farmhouse into a luxury guest-house. Without going into all the  details at this point, both projects had come to a sticky end.

So I was at a crossroads. As I saw it I had the following choices :

I could restart my own law firm;

I could join another legal practice;

I could seek employment in general commerce

I could start my own business venture – but what?

I really did rack my brain for a while. My own law firm did still exist in some form, but I was looking for a new challenge.

I consulted with some personnel agencies investigating the possibilities of positions in pursuit of options (b) and (c) but remember that I was a 43 year old white male, with considerable experience in a South Africa that was heavily focused on affirmative action. It was not easy and I’ll bore no one with the excuses and disappointments that were associated with exhausting these options.

The fourth option, almost ludicrous as it seemed, posed the most attractive solution.

But what business should I start?

Then one day I was clearing out some papers and found some notes that pertained to the meetings around the concept of the Millennium Concert party mentioned above. In addition, at this time the spectre of what was called the YK2 Calamity had started to cause people to at least think about the advent of the new Millennium, and how especially how they would be celebrating it.

For the record the Y2 Calamity which revolved around potential computer shortcomings to deal with the change of the millennium thankfully turned out to be a lot of hot air (although some businesses spent large amounts of money trying to ensure that their computers and system were protected against all eventualities)

Internationally there seemed much more of a buzz than there was in South Africa. All sorts of projects were being mooted for different towns. In retrospect the most famous (and infamous too perhaps, because it was a huge financial flop) was probably the Millennium Dome that was erected near Greenwich Village in England.

Major cities were forming committees to co-ordinate efforts so as to include as many members of the community as possible in celebrations that would not only ensure a safe and spectacular celebration involving the broader community but which would also leave some lasting legacy for generations to come.

The rallying cry of one of these was a statement which went along these lines -

When you chose an activity to celebrate the advent of the new Millennium it should be so spectacular that in 25 years time, when you tell your children or grandchildren what you did (and it should be something better than that you had an excruciating headache the next morning), they should look amazed and say ‘Wow!

So I wrote up a list of potential projects which went something like this :

The Millennium Bells – an ambitious project which would involve arranging for a specially cast Bell (it turned out to be a hand bell similar to that which is used in schools to signal the start of lessons) to undertake a journey starting at one minute past midnight on 1 January 1999 from the Diaz Memorial in Mossel Bay, traveling throughout South Africa during the remainder of the year and ending in a triumphant parade through the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town just before midnight on 31 December 1999. I envisaged that the final resting place of the Millennium Bell in the V&A Waterfront would become a signpost for people to meet at when visiting one of South Africa’s most popular tourist attractions. The Bells would be carried from town to town each day by athletes from road-running clubs or schools in relay fashion and I plotted out a route which covered about 100km per day on average. The main idea behind the project was that it would provide ordinary people throughout the country an opportunity to do something special for the Millennium – at the very least seeing the Bells would be a uniting factor for people throughout the country.

Incidentally the Millennium Bell did commence its journey in Mossel Bay at midnight on 1 January 1999 and continued for another 17 days until lack of sponsorship brought its journey to an end.

The Millennium Golf Challenge – an unusual opportunity for the golfers who were able to persuade their families that this was a unique concept. Play a round of golf on 31 December 1999 and also on 1 January 2000, and in so doing one would end up playing two consecutive rounds on different days, in different months, in different years, in different decades, in different generations, different centuries and of course in different millennia! Wow, I thought – that would be a hit. The clever golf clubs would be able to hold a New Year’s party of some proportion to involve also the rest of the family of the participating golfers. And even the smallest towns in South Africa usually have a golf club. Just two  clubs did participate, namely Smithfield in the Eastern Free State and Heidelberg in Gauteng and by all accounts great fun was had by all. What I had not taken into account was that just about every golf club in South Africa had decided to close for both days to give their staff an opportunity to celebrate on their own and probably also as a precaution against the Y2K Calamity. I think they missed a major opportunity.

The Millennium Message Book – On a trip to the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean I had come across a granite memorial which stood over a time capsule placed there in the 1950’s and which was to be opened in 100 years time. Here I thought was another way in which the average citizen of virtually every nation could become involved in a Millennium related project. The idea was to compile a Millennium Message Book containing messages collected from around the World, which would be carefully buried at a pre-determined spot and only opened in 100 years time.

The Night of the Millennium Stars – a gala banquet to be held simultaneously in the major centres throughout South Africa linked through the power of satellite technology and a big screen presentation, which would have been an opportunity to give recognition to all our top citizens and sportsmen and sportswomen over the past Century in South Africa

And there were others.

I even went so far as to form a company to run these projects which I called SA 2000 Promotions (Pty) Ltd. I must say I was astounded that I could get that name at the time.

Anyway, I started to work out how to put these projects together. My big break came one Sunday afternoon, when I decided to compose a letter to one of the film production clients from the days at Hofmeyr Van der Merwe mentioned earlier, namely Anant Singh, the CEO of Videovision Enterprises, based in Durban.  Anant’s own story of how he went from a young boy who earned extra cash for his family by re-spooling the returned films at a movie-hire business (which he eventually acquired) to turning his hand at financing and producing films is well-documented elsewhere. For our purposes we can merely note today that Anant’s company has been involved in the production of over 80 feature films including films such as Sarafina and Long Walk to Freedom and has held the distribution rights in South Africa of hundreds more.

Anant is a workaholic, and so it did not surprise me to find him in his office that Sunday afternoon. After a short chat he told me to fax him the letter I had prepared containing a short outline of the projects I’ve named above, and he’d revert to me. Within half an hour of sending him that fax he was on the telephone line with an instruction that I was fly to Durban on the first plane out of Johannesburg on Monday that his PA would arrange for me. By early afternoon the next day we had already reached agreement on the extent to which his company would contribute funds to my efforts to bring the projects I had mentioned into fruition. There was also a tacit understanding that whatever projects Anant and his crew might develop would go through SA 2000 Promotions. That this did not turn out so, as Videovision developed their own project being a concert on Robben Island without including me, was a disappointment, but I have no regrets, as they supplied funding which allowed me to keep food on the table for my family, and withdrew from my operations without any fuss when it was time to do so. And to be even more fair, when I approached them recently for some seed money to float Millennium Big 5 Challenge 2025 (Pty) Limited, Anant and his brother Sanjeev responded within 24 hours and the money was in the bank within 48 hours!

In March 1999 I was on vacation at a bushveld farm with my family and some friends. One night we sat watching the fire late into the night. One friend listened patiently to me going on about all the different Millennium related projects I was in the process of developing but posed a simple question:

But what are you going to do personally that you’ll remember in 25 years time?

That got me thinking about the endurance events that take place in South Africa and we started discussing them in turn. A more detailed history of each event will be provided later but to set the scene it is sufficient to state the following by way of introduction :

The Dusi Canoe Marathon – the classic canoeists sometimes disdainfully refer to the Dusi as a tri-athlon : canoeing, swimming (depending on water levels and skills there can be quite a lot of this – and even the top athletes are not totally exempt from the odd unscheduled acquaintance with water outside of the canoe!) and running (or if you prefer walking) – through pretty gruesome terrain having regard to both the vegetation and gradient of the slopes that are encountered, and generally in sweltering heat or if it has rained in very slippery conditions. The total distance covered in the three days is somewhere over 120kms.  I put this event on the list because one of my memories from childhood was going down to the Blue Lagoon Roadhouse at the mouth of the Umgeni River in Durban with my parents while we were on holiday and watching paddlers like Graeme Pope Ellis and his partner finishing the Dusi Marathon. I remember distinctly that their blistered hands were covered in mercurochrome drenched plasters!

The Midmar Mile Swim – for many of the Challengers this was by far the easiest event, but it certainly presented a Challenge for me and I still think it is often under estimated. A swim of about 1600metres (can be slightly more if the Dam is full or slightly less if the dam level is down) across (and not as I thought around the edge) of a huge deep Dam! The Midmar Mile has grown from a small beginning and in 2023 celebrated its 50th staging.

The Cape Argus Cycle Tour (now known as The Cape Town Cycle Tour) – which is basically a cycle ride of around 109kms which starts in the centre of Cape Town and heads out to Simons Town before rounding the peninsula at Cape Point and then heading back to the centre of Cape Town via Chapman’s Peak and through Constantia. The race has increased in popularity since 1978 and attracts the largest number of cyclists (of all shapes and sizes) in any timed event around the world. Although I hadn’t ridden a bicycle (except a stationary one in the Old Edwardians gymnasium occasionally!) since childhood, the theory at least was that once one had ridden a bike, you could always ride one, and so this looked a particularly attractive candidate to add to the list.

The Comrades Marathon – an annual foot-slog (aptly described by the organisers over the years as the ultimate human race) between Pietermaritzburg and Durban measuring around 90kms which is much revered in South Africa as being a significant achievement for any athlete to achieve. Apart from the challenging terrain over which the Comrades is run (with 5 massive hills but numerous others along the way) perhaps the biggest difference between the Comrades and some of the other renowned marathons such as the London Marathon and New York Marathon (the distance of which is only 42,1 kms) is that there is a cut-off time limit in the Comrades which is now 12 hours. Interestingly about 60% of the athletes who finish in time each year do so in the final hour. Anyway, I can still remember how as an 8-10 year old I heard the adults in our neighbourhood talking in awed tones about Mr Sampson who was a Comrades runner. In those days only a hundred or two (as opposed to the figure in excess of 20 000 today) athletes each year attempted the Comrades and for the suburb to have someone in the race was noteworthy.  I had attempted the Comrades in 1981 but was forced to retire with a very sore knee ligament (which still plagues to this day, but I have resisted the urging of the orthopods to go under the knife to have it repaired – and as you will see in due course still managed to complete the Comrades in the year 2000!). So as they say, adding the Comrades to the list of 'possibles' was a no-brainer.

The curved ball in our discussion came when my friend raised the fact that his father had recently climbed to Uhuru Peak on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the highest point in Africa (at 5985 metres above sea-level) and the highest free-standing mountain in the world. Though not a technical climb in the sense that one does not need rope skills, or sophisticated equipment (other than protection against the cold once you advance beyond day 2!) Kilimanjaro remains a significant test of endurance as is evidenced by the statistic that only around one in ten persons who attempt the ascent actually reach the summit. As one can imagine the taunt implicit in my friend’s recounting of his Dad’s exploits was :

If a man over the age of 60 can do it, why can’t you!

Of course, that argument was hard to resist, especially given the location and circumstances of our discussion.

Since I had not completed any of the aforegoing events before, completing any one of them may have qualified as doing something special to celebrate the Millennium that I could discuss in 25 years time!

As the coals on the fire turned from bright golden to a warm red, my personal courage seemed to increase and by the time we went to bed I knew that my challenge for the Millennium would be to complete all five in one year!

The looks of incredulity on the faces around the breakfast table the next morning when I proclaimed that my goal for the Millennium year was to complete all five events in one year and to make a business out of it was almost impossible to describe.

Their unbelief was enhanced by the fact that although I still played Reserve League Cricket for Old Edwardians on a Saturday afternoon and winter hockey for the Masters league, (and of course hunted when we went to the farm) I could hardly be described as being a model of fitness. In fact I carried a respectable middle-aged tyre around my waist, which even the rigours of the 2000 Challenge did not eliminate entirely though I did lose around 25 kilograms!. One of my hockey friends once described me changing direction on the hockey field as being like the turning of an ocean liner.

Okay,  I said to myself on returning to the harsh reality of life in Johannesburg after the visit to the farm had ended, assuming you are going to have the ability to develop the capacity to do all five of the events next year, how are you going to make money while doing it.?

The first thought was to draw up a letter to 20 high profile personalities and issue a Challenge to them to join me in my quest for millennium success. I had great fun compiling the rather cheeky list, even more fun drafting the invitation letter which was hand delivered to their offices, and was astounded at the response I drew.

Obviously it would be inappropriate for me to name and shame those to whom I issued the challenge and who did not respond or participate in the Challenge.

One person I do not have qualms about mentioning is 9 times winner and Comrades legend Bruce Fordyce.  We had both run in University of Witwatersrand colours in the late 1970’s, although I was definitely not a front-runner. Even at that time however Bruce had shown one of his best characteristics. He was always willing to help a fellow athlete with a word of advice or encouragement if asked. Something else that not many people knew about Bruce at the time he was winning his Comrades races was that he did not run every race hard. In fact until his Comrades exploits attracted invitations for him to do other events overseas (like the London to Brighton Marathon and others) the Comrades was the only race in South Africa that he entered with the express purpose of winning. That meant that in a number of other races in the interval between one Comrades and another, Bruce ran purely for fun or just to get distance in his legs without risking any injury. The consequence was that he often ran with the more social Joes in the middle of the pack, and was able to give many tips to the average runners who were enthralled to be running in his presence. And that lasted after the race too and so Bruce was an extremely popular athlete.

By 1999 Bruce was the CEO of the Sports Trust which had been set up with the backing of Sasol and Nedbank and other corporations as a vehicle to enhance education through sport by providing sporting equipment, kit and building facilities for previously disadvantaged communities.

This initiative has been so successful that by 2023 the Sports Trust has invested over R 62 million in more than 261 projects cross all nine provinces in South Africa.

I hand delivered the Challenge to Bruce at his offices in Rivonia and he was intrigued with the idea. He never publicly committed on the Challenge (for a reason that is about to become clear) but did attend some of the functions I arranged to promote the concept) and wrote an exceptional article which I deal with later in this book but in which he revealed his weakness would be swimming the Midmar Mile.

Another good response to the Challenge I had thrown out was that of David O’Sullivan a talk-show host on Radio 702, which broadcast on medium wave to an area which mainly comprised the old Transvaal region of South Africa. I will