FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Gert Thys in Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon Friday
Most marathon runners would kill for that pre-race requisite, the bowl of
pasta. But for Gert Thys, even a few mouthfuls of the runners' rocket-fuel
would kill off any chance he had of finishing.
"If I eat pasta before a race, I might as well not go to the starting
line," says the 39 year old South African, who suffered 15 years of blowing
up at the end of races before he discovered his high gluten intolerance.
"I'd be in the lead or the top two or three in races, and get to the last
couple of kilometres, and my legs would go numb, I'd get dizzy, and almost
black out. It would happen in training also. I'd have to sit down by the
roadside until I recovered.
"I knew something was wrong with my diet. But I had tests, in the US, in
England, in Australia, and at home in South Africa. I must have spent 30 to
40 thousand dollars trying to resolve it. They all said, you don't get
enough carbs (carbohydrates, ie pasta and the like).
"But that was the problem, unless I have low-carb rice and bread, my body
can't break it down. I eat mostly vegetables when I travel, but you have to
eat so much to get the same energy.
"I believe if I'd detected it earlier, I could have done extraordinary
things in athletics".
His performances while suffering the problem – top six in the world
half-marathon in 1997 and 1998, and first man the run three sub-2.08
marathons – and on the few occasions that the allergy took a time-out
suggest that Thys' evaluation is more than tenable. He won the Tokyo
Marathon in 1999, in 2.06.33, which would have been a world record six
months earlier, and is still a national record, and the course record.
"I could probably have broken the world record that day, but I was so
worried that if I stretched too much in the final kilometres, the same
thing would happen".
As if Thys hadn't had enough problems in his life. Born and raised in the
Northern Cape province of apartheid South Africa, he concedes that he is
far from being an intellectual. "I was not well educated, I left school
early, because of the suffering at home. I couldn't use my head to make a
living. So, I decided I would have to use my legs".
Accordingly, he went to work in the mines (albeit not underground), because
they had athletics teams. The strict hours meant he was often training at
4.30am, and again in the evening, between overtime shifts to pay off the
extra running shoe costs that would be deducted from salary.
It evidently did not dampen a spirit which had driven him to run his first
marathon at the age of 13, as he says, before he knew any better. "It was
the first marathon in Prieska, my home town, and I wanted to be part of it.
I hadn't trained, but as a schoolboy, I ran 800, 1500, 3000 metres. I ran
2.47 in the marathon".
It was four years before he ran another one, this time in 2.19.04. To prove
it wasn't a fluke, he ran another one a month later, just one second
slower. "Both at altitude," he emphasises. Another two weeks later, he ran
43.33 for 15k, which remains a national junior record.
Then began the compendium of see-saw results, due to whether the gluten
allergy struck or not. But even when that was resolved in 2001, he only had
a few years' grace before had an even worse problem.
He won the Dong-A marathon in Seoul 2006, and was told a few weeks later
that he had tested positive for nandrolone. He vehemently contested the
result, and in a protracted case, that has still to be fully resolved, he
was exonerated by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which was then
over-ruled by the Swiss High Court. But since it had dragged on for well
over two years – more than the usual suspension period – he was given
clearance to compete.
His resilience was evident in his first big race back, a rain-swept Beijing
Marathon last October, when he led until the final stages of the race, only
to be overtaken by Siraj Gena, an Ethiopian some 13 years younger.
Now Thys tackles the Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon, Friday morning,
against a score of fast, and young East Africans, Kenyans and Ethiopians.
On paper, he remains one of the fastest men in the field, but as he himself
points out, that was 12 years ago. Nonetheless undaunted, he says, "My
training times are the same as back when I was running really fast. So,
we'll see".
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