With just two races left in the SPAR Women’s 10km Challenge series, Mr Price’s Rene Kalmer appears to have a least one hand on the R50 000 Grand Prix cheque.
Kalmer, who won the races in Port Elizabeth and Durban, battled with stomach cramps throughout the Pretoria race on Saturday, and finished in fourth position. However, she now has 86 points – 29 ahead of her nearest rival, Annerine van Schalkwyk of Irene, who has 57 points and appears unbeatable on the Grand Prix leaderboard.
There is much jostling for position after Kalmer. Van Schalkwyk is only three points ahead of Harmony’s Maxine Heine-Wacker and Noria Sibanda, and Poppy Mlambo, Catherine Nkosi, Grace de Oliveira, Simangela Mabuza and Gloria Baeba are all hot on their heels. Only nine points separate these runners, and the race for third and fourth place is still wide open.
Mlambo missed the Pretoria Challenge because of international commitments, but is expected to get back into contention for one of the bigger prizes in the last two races, in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
De Oliveira, Heine-Wacker and Sibanda have all used the Grand Prix rules to their advantage, running all three races so far and capitalising on the age category bonus points as well as points for beating last year’s times in Port Elizabeth and Pretoria.
The Cape Town Challenge takes place on September 9 and the final race in the Grand Prix series, the Johannesburg Challenge, is to be run on October 14.
Ninety-eight women have scored points in the series so far, and the number of names on the leaderboard is expected to increase after the Cape Town and Johannesburg races.
While the winner walks away with a cheque for R50 000, there are cash prizes for the top 20 runners, and every woman whose name appears on the leaderboard will receive a commemorative certificate.
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