Bruce Fordyce
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Bruce Fordyce (born December 3, 1955, Hong Kong) is a South African marathon and ultramarathon athlete. He is best known for having won the South African Comrades Marathon a record nine times, of which eight wins were consecutive.
Born in Hong Kong, Fordyce’s family moved to Johannesburg when he was 13 years old. He completed his school career at Woodmead High School and subsequently attended the University of the Witwatersrand, where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1977 and his Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in 1979. During this time he was also a member of the university’s Student Representative Council as well as a committee member of the Wits Athletic Club.
In 1977, when Fordyce first ran the Comrades marathon, he placed 43rd out of 1,678 entries. He gradually "rose through the ranks" and went on to win the Comrades for an unprecedented eight consecutive years between 1981 and 1988; he won it again in 1990. No other runner in the history of the Comrades had ever previously achieved this feat. Fordyce also held the record time for the "up" (Durban to Pietermaritzburg) run and his record for the "down" (Pietermaritzburg to Durban) run of 5:24:07 (set in 1986), had stood for 21 years, and was finally broken in 2007 by Russia's Leonid Shvetsov.
His results for Comrades (to 2007) are (year, position, time, race direction):
1977 43 06:45:00 Up 1978 14 06:11:00 Down 1979 3 05:51:15 Up 1980 2 05:40:31 Down 1981 1 05:37:28 Up 1982 1 05:34:22 Down 1983 1 05:30:12 Up 1984 1 05:27:18 Down 1985 1 05:37:01 Up 1986 1 05:24:07 Down 1987 1 05:37:01 Up 1988 1 05:27:42 Up 1990 1 05:40:25 Up 1991 328 06:57:02 Down 1994 19 06:01:54 Up 1995 2232 08:42:48 Down 1996 329 06:59:30 Up 2000 2691 08:41:11 Up 2001 2790 08:50:52 Down 2002 4252 09:48:46 Up 2003 2784 08:53:12 Down 2004 3088 09:26:02 Up 2005 2311 08:45:20 Down 2006 3596 09:41:11 Up 2007 3861 09:48:18 Down
He has thus completed 25 Comrades Marathons, including the remarkable result of posting identical times in 1985 and 1987.
His first victory was particularly brave and notable because he ran the race wearing a black armband to protest the 20th anniversary celebrations of the apartheid republic attracting boos and even some rotten tomatoes from a largely white crowd.
Fordyce is the world record holder over 50 miles - which he set during the 1983 London to Brighton ultramarathon – and he also holds the 50 mile record for the United States All Comers Race.
In addition to having written two books about the Comrades Marathon, Fordyce is also currently (2004) a sports columnist for various newspapers and magazines. He is also a motivational speaker and the Chief Executive Officer of the South African Sports Trust.
In 2004, he was voted 64th in the Top 100 Great South Africans.
On the 21st of November 2007, he was given an honorary doctorate from the University of the Witwatersrand.
