Top of the Table for Kane and Bianca at the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon opener

Kane Reilly and Bianca Tarboton with the Vertical Challenge trophy. Photo - Stephen Granger

Cape Town athletes, Kane Reilly and Bianca Tarboton, were crowned Table Mountain royalty at the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon Vertical Challenge this evening (Thursday 12 October), the event opener of the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon (SCTM)weekend festival of running, which climaxes with the road city marathon on Sunday.

Kyle Bucklow and Rob Tweddle racing to the finish in the Vertical Challenge. Photo – Stephen Granger

Reilly and Tarboton defended their titles won last year in emphatic fashion, both improving their times on a 6,3km course between St Cyprians School in Oranjezicht and the upper cable station on the Table Top, 600m longer than last year’s edition.

Both Reilly and Tarboton are both part of the adidas TERREX team, with Reilly the SCTM sponsor’s most recent signing to the successful global trail squad. Both raced last Saturday’s 42km Otter African Trail Run but showed little sign of muscle fatigue as they raced away from the start and made their way through Deer Park, up Platteklip Gorge to the upper cable station in considerably less than an hour.

Scot Robbie Simpson, another TERREX athlete, came out on top in his Otter African Trail Run debut last Saturday, with Reilly in second, less than two minutes in arrears. But Reilly turned the tables on Table Mountain today in his training ‘back garden’, winning in 42:39, over a minute faster than his effort last year.

Kane Reilly is all determination and focus as he races to victory in the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon Vertical Challenge. Photo – Stephen Granger

Simpson, clearly feeling the effects of his Otter win five days back, ran home in the second fastest time of the day of 44:06, with another Otter competitor, Robbie Rorich, placing third in 48:32, clearly not yet recovered from his Southern Cape sojourn.

Athletes were seeded to start at minute intervals, according to their ability with Reilly and Simpson the last two to start. The Capetonian overtook all but two of the athletes in the field, to race to a fine victory.

Terrex teammates Bianca Tarboton and Robbie Simpson in the closing stages of the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon Vertical Challenge. Photo – Stephen Granger

Tarboton was in a class of her own in the women’s competition, winning in 50:50, a minute quicker than her time last year and almost five minutes quicker than that of George-based athlete, Rebecca Kohne. Olympic cyclist, Hayley Preen, was third in 58:01 in a rare appearance in a mountain race.

For many, even most, of the athletes, today’s race was a warm-up for Saturday’s 22km or 46km Sanlam Cape Town Trail Marathon by Ryan Sandes, which takes place over a technically challenging but scenically outstanding course on Table Mountain.

An interested spectator at the finish of the vertical challenge was the CEO of the Berlin Marathon, in Cape Town for the weekend, in support of the African marathon’s candidacy as an Abbot Marathon major. He had to concede that Cape Town had one significant advantage that Berlin could never hope to emulate – the presence of a vertical challenge race as a curtain raiser to the marathon!

Results Sanlam Vertical Challenge

Men

Local trail athlete, Rob Shaff, in the finishing straight of the Vertical Challenge. Photo – Stephen Granger

1 Kane Reilly 42:39; 2 Robbie Simpson 44:06; 3 Robbie Rorich 48:32 ; 4 Oli Morris 48 :39 ; 5 Oliver Munnik 49:32; 6 Robert Hobson 49:53; 7 Kyle Bucklow 50:16; 8 Johardt van Heerden 52:25; 9 Rob Tweddle 54:43; 10 Ross Minter-Brown 55:16

Women

1 Bianca Tarboton 50:50; 2 Rebecca Kohne 55:26; 3 Hayley Preen 58:01; Jana van Houwelingen 1:03:29; 5 Shafeeqah Gordon 1:07:58; 6 Samantha Goldswain 1:12:35; 7 Tara-Lee Fourie 1:17:30

Stephen Granger