Sweat, tears and camaraderie as 20,000 runners take on world’s largest ultramarathon

Athletes gather before the start of the Comrades Marathon in Durban. Photograph: James Oatway/The Guardian For one day every June, South Africa’s searing racial inequality seems to melt away at Comrades race By Rachel Savage in Durban and Pietermaritzburg. Photographs by James Oatway I n the early morning dark, thousands of runners waited, jostling with anticipation. South Africa’s national anthem rang out. Then the haunting swell of Shosholoza , first sung by Zimbabwean migrant workers in South Africa’s goldmines. Finally, that unmistakable, spine-tingling piano: Chariots of Fire. View image in fullscreen Runners gather before the start of the marathon 5am. A cock crowed. A gun fired. The runners streamed across the start line of the Comrades marathon. Runners depart from Pietermaritzburg The Comrades is the world’s oldest and largest ultramarathon. The first race in 1921 took the runners 54.6 miles (88km) from Pietermaritzburg downhill to Durban on the coast. The following year the race was run in reverse, uphill back to Pietermaritzburg, and it has changed direction every year since, pausing only for the second world war and the Covid-19 pandemic. Over its 99 iterations, the route distance has averaged just under 55 miles. View image in fullscreen View image in fullscreen View image in fullscreen View image in fullscreen L-R clockwise: Athletes gather before the start of the Comrades Marathon in Durban; supporters gathered to watch the start of the 2026 Comrades; the race begins That first year, 34 runners, all white men, lined up for the race, conceived by the first world war veteran Vic Clapham as a way of honouring his fallen comrades. Sixteen of them finished. More than a century later, on 14 June, more than 20,000 people stood outside Durban city hall, hoping to make it to Pietermaritzburg before the 12-hour cutoff. What started as an all-white, all-male test of physical endurance has become part of the fabric of South African life, something so ordinary that you would be hard-pressed to find someone here who does not know a Comrades finisher. Running clubs bus in from all over the country. Security guards and shop workers line up alongside bankers and celebrities. And, for one day, every June, South Africa’s searing racial inequality seems to melt away. View image in fullscreen Nomusa Shelembe, from the Run Alex team, passes through Pinetown You hear it all around the race: every runner has their reason. William Seleka started running in March 2025, amid a deep depression after the break-up of his marriage. “I thought for me to stay alive, I had to keep myself busy,” he said, as he stretched before a run, outside the single room he rents in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra, two weeks before Comrades. Seleka was persuaded to join Run Alex , a local club. Six months later, having never run further than 10km, he finished a 50km ultramarathon, from Johannesburg to Pretoria. “I used to hear people saying, ‘This is Comrades, you are runn