There are moments in life when a piece of music catches you completely off guard — not because it’s new, but because it’s exactly right for the moment you’re living in. That’s precisely what happened to running legend Bruce Fordyce on a golden Johannesburg autumn afternoon recently, when he pulled out a vinyl copy of George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and let the music do what music does best: make the present feel both heavier and more beautiful at once. Because this time, the soundtrack carried a quiet, bittersweet truth — for the first time in over 40 years, Fordyce would not be lining up at the Totalsports Two Oceans Marathon.
For those unfamiliar with the man, Bruce Fordyce is not just another runner. He is South African athletics royalty — a nine-time Comrades Marathon winner whose relationship with the Two Oceans stretches all the way back to 1983, when he first pinned on a race number and fell instantly in love with a course that many consider the most spectacular ultramarathon route on the planet. Since that debut, the race became a fixed point in his calendar, as certain as the autumn chill that sweeps across the Cape Peninsula every April.
His connection to the race is, remarkably, even older than his debut suggests. In late 1982, Fordyce was among a select group of athletes invited to Cape Town to help celebrate the launch of a fledgling sportswear retail brand. That brand was Totalsports — now the title sponsor of the very race he has dedicated four decades of his life to. Nobody in that room could have predicted how the story would unfold.
His first Two Oceans in 1983 was a statement of intent. He posted a blistering 47-minute split over the 14km stretch from the marathon mark at the base of Constantia Nek to the old finish at Villagers, ultimately crossing the line fourth overall in a time of 3:14. He never ran it that fast again, but he never needed to. The race had already claimed him completely.
Why the Totalsports Two Oceans Marathon Is So Much More Than a Race
The genius of the Totalsports Two Oceans Marathon is that it is, by design, two entirely different experiences stitched together into one unforgettable 56km journey. The first half lures you in — gentle gradients, the salt-sharp smell of ocean at Muizenberg, the roaring support at Hout Bay, the lush serenity of Kirstenbosch Gardens. It’s seductive and polite, almost deceptively so. Then the second half arrives and strips all of that away, replacing postcard beauty with the kind of physical reckoning that reveals who a runner truly is. As Fordyce himself puts it, it’s the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde of ultramarathons — and that duality is precisely what makes it one of the greatest tests in long-distance running.
Balancing this race against the demands of the Comrades Marathon was always the great strategic tension of Fordyce’s career. Both races sit close on the calendar, and he understood early on that racing both at maximum effort was a recipe for physical disaster. He chose Comrades as his primary battlefield and used Two Oceans as a joyful, high-quality training run — an approach that served him extraordinarily well. Only Derek Preiss has ever achieved the double-double, winning both races in 1974 and 1975, a feat that grows more improbable with every passing year as race standards improve.
Then there is Gerda Steyn — a category entirely her own. The extraordinary South African women’s running star has dominated both races simultaneously in a way that leaves the sport’s greatest minds shaking their heads. As Fordyce himself concedes with admiration, she is so gifted that she almost defies analysis. Steyn has won the Two Oceans ultramarathon six times, broken the course record on multiple occasions, and does it all with a smile that suggests she is genuinely having the time of her life. Watching her race is one of South African sport’s great privileges.
The race has given Fordyce far more than medals and memories. It gave him friendships. Characters. Stories worth telling for the rest of his life. He ran alongside Noel Stamper, who famously detoured off the course to take a dip in both oceans mid-race. He witnessed Thompson Magawana set a course record in 1988 that still has not been broken. He remembered Vincent Rakabaele, who won the race despite taking a wrong turn at the start — and whose story ended in heartbreaking obscurity, his grave eventually found in the windswept Maluti Mountains of Lesotho years after his quiet passing.
For a stretch of glorious, slightly unhinged years, Fordyce and a group of friends ran the race inside a giant green centipede tube — a shongololo costume that delighted children along the route and left fellow runners torn between laughter and disbelief. On one particularly savage morning atop Chapman’s Peak, a howling gale nearly sent the whole contraption into the Atlantic. Only in South Africa.
Perhaps no figure outside of Fordyce himself deserves more credit for the soul of the Two Oceans than Chet Sainsbury and his wife Annemarie. Fordyce holds them in the highest regard — describing Chet as the greatest Two Oceans runner not for his times or his silver medals, but for his lifelong commitment to growing, protecting, and treasuring the race as an institution.
Fordyce now holds permanent blue number 648 — a badge of honour that marks a relationship with this race unlike almost any other in South African athletics. That number represents not just entries and finish lines, but an entire life lived through the rhythm of autumn in the Cape. This year, for the first time, that number won’t be moving through the mountain passes. Instead, it will be watching from an armchair, tea in hand, cheering on thousands of runners who are about to fall under the same spell that caught Bruce Fordyce more than four decades ago. And if the Two Oceans has taught us anything, it’s that some loves — like some records, like some autumn traditions — simply do not fade.