Standard Chartered Bank, one of the world’s most international banks with 50 000 employees in 56 countries, including South Africa, has announced its sponsorship of a South African women’s team to compete in the 2006/07 Standard Chartered Greatest Race on Earth.
Now in its third year, Standard Chartered’s Greatest Race on Earth is a unique and grueling four-leg, relay marathon to contested over a period of five months in Nairobi, Singapore, Mumbai and Hong Kong. The first leg of this year’s Greatest Race will be run in the Kenyan capital on October 29.
The Race is about contestants pushing their limits, and performing for themselves as well as their teammates, and with total cash prizes of $1,5 million it remains the biggest race in world athletics.
The four, top athletes in the Standard Chartered South Africa team are: Farwa Mentoor, Elana Meyer, Louisa Leballo and Gloria Baebo. The sixth woman to cross the Comrades Marathon finishing line this year, Cape Town-based Farwa Mentoor will run the initial leg for the South African team in Nairobi on October 29.
Leaving her home in Stellenbosch to take on the Singaporean course on December 3 is the darling of South African distance runners, Elana Meyer; and Louisa Leballo, another one of the country’s accomplished distance runners, will lead the South African challenge in Mumbai on January 21.
Gloria Baebo, the youngest of the four and one of the country’s emerging long distance talents, will fly the Standard Chartered South Africa flag in the final marathon of the event in Hong Kong on March 4. Both Leballo and Baebo are based in Pretoria.
The South African team has been entered into the Women’s Team Challenge to be contested by a total of 15 teams. It features cash prizes of $200,000 to be shared by the first five teams.
Prizes range from $10,000 for the fifth best team time to $100,000 for the winning women’s team, which is calculated on the combined finishing times of the four athletes. The South African team also qualifies for the Performance Awards category, with cash prizes of $55,000.
The prize money in the Main Team Challenge category is $845,000, and the Nations Challenge category carries a prize purse of $400,000. The mix of exotic locations, challenging climatic conditions and the total of the cash prizes for the four race categories has attracted 320 athletes to compete in the 2006/07 Standard Chartered Greatest Race on Earth.
They will make up 80 teams drawn from 30 different countries, all set on working together to achieve a faster cumulative time than their rivals – and a share of the prize pool.
The four athletes in the South African team are preparing with training programmes especially designed for them by their coaches and managers, Nick Bester and Bruce Fordyce, themselves both legendary marathon runners. The climatic and terrain features peculiar to the four cities where each athlete will run her particular leg have been, and are, a significant factor in their programmes.
"We are delighted to be sponsoring a competitive women’s team this year, " said Chris Low, CEO Standard Chartered South Africa. "Our sponsorship of the team and the Bank’s creation and sponsorship of the Greatest Race itself is an appropriate partnership given our business ethos of collaboration, teamwork and high performance and our living values in creativity, trust and responsiveness.
“In addition, the four leg cities that constitute the course are excellent illustrators of our focus and expertise in emerging markets, and our global reach. Our sponsorship of a South African team, one of 30 nationalities represented this year, highlights both the international core of the Greatest Race series and Standard Chartered’s international operational domain.
"We wish our team good luck – and good times. We know that they will be putting in a massive, courageous effort in the Women’s Team Challenge," he said.
(0 rating, 0 votes, rated)
Loading...
