SA athlete has lightning finish at London Marathon

KwaZulu-Natal runner Adam Lipschitz finished the London Marathon on 27 April in 12th place to rank as the highest-placed South African. His time of 2:09:47 was only seven minutes behind the winning runner.

The 31-year-old Glenwood High School alumnus was hoping to make the top 10 and run quicker, even though his time was only a minute short of the personal best he set in the Valencia Marathon last year.

“The London Marathon is probably the biggest marathon in the world in terms of its stature and obviously has a bigger bravado than the Valencia race, so 12th place is a good result,” says Lipschitz, who was born and bred in Durban.

“I was looking for a top-10 finish, and I was on target for it, but the last few kilometres, I didn’t really have it in me and went backwards a little bit. I was wanting to run a lot quicker, probably come seventh or eighth, but I’m not disappointed at all. It’s still a London Marathon out of 65 000 people. I’m happy.”

He came up against what he dubs “the biggest and best field in the world” with the likes of Eliud Kipchoge in the mix. Kenyan Sabastian Sawe won with 2:02:27.

Lipschitz says the conditions were very warm for London. Along the route of the marathon, which goes back to 1981 in its current form, runners can see Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, the London Eye, Big Ben, and Buckingham Palace.

He didn’t know that he finished in the last place to receive prize money, but is happy to take the $1 000 (R18 536) sum.

The runners in the top 10 are all full-time athletes, Lipschitz says. “They all just run. That’s all they do. They train the whole time, and run around the world. They train in Kenya for 10 months a year. I don’t have the capacity to go there at the moment. It sounds silly, but running is more of a social hobby that I’m really good at and enjoy.

“I’m now the number two runner in South Africa. Last year, I was number one in the country with my 2:08, but another South African guy ran quicker in Hamburg on the same day as the London Marathon.” That was Elroy Gelant, who broke the 26-year-old South African men’s marathon record with a time of 2:05:36, beating the 2:06:33 mark set by Gert Thys in 1999.

“I’m not a professional athlete at all,” Lipschitz says. “I’ve got a commercial cleaning company and a property and investment management firm, so the running sort of works around my business in Cape Town, Durban, etc. I train five times a week.”

Lipschitz has been running since primary school. “I was always running fast and winning, and then started representing the country in high school. I won the junior Under-19 5km championship in the country back then.”

The Valencia and London marathons rank as the highlights of his running journey. “I definitely have to take and enjoy this London result,” he says. He will be running the Cape Town Marathon this year, but won’t tackle the Comrades anytime soon. “When you can’t run anymore at my level, you do Comrades. All those guys who run Comrades can’t compete with us at the moment because they aren’t fast enough.”

Nevertheless, he aspires to win the Comrades one day. “Being from Durban, I think the Comrades is part of my roots, but we’re talking seven years, eight years’ time.”

Lipschitz travels around the world constantly to run different races. “I’ve run in Chicago, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Slovakia, Budapest, London, Northern Ireland, Spain, and Portugal,” he says.

He competes within “a whole running community internationally, with managers, athletes, and so on. London was obviously a big event. I have a lot of opportunities coming now.”

He is targeting the 2028 Olympics in the United States. “There’s a 99% chance I’ll be going,” he says, “as I’m in the top three in the country at the moment.”