Central SA
More than 1 000 expected at May Mangaung Marathon─── KEKELETSO MOSEBETSI 16:03 Thu, 15 Feb 2024
“To us, this is one of those events that we want to see ourselves taking Mangaung and putting it on another level.”
A new marathon has been launched in the Free State. It will be the first Comrades Marathon qualifier to start and finish in Mangaung township.
Delegates, including the Executive Chairperson of Kenworth Group, Freddy Kenny, Human Settlement Mangaung Mayoral Committee member, Ntombi Nhlapho, and Centre City Titaniums Athletics Club (CTAC) representative, Teboho Lemao, gathered at Lemo Mall in Bloemfontein on Thursday (15/2) to showcase the event.
The marathon will take place on Saturday, 4 May 2024. Last year, CTAC partnered with Lemo Mall on the 10 km and 5 km run, which formed part of the first-ever Lemo Fest event.
This year’s Lemo Mall Mangaung Marathon invites residents to be part of the journey under the slogan ‘Your Roots, Our Route'. There are three distances in which runners can participate: 42,2km, 21.1km, 10km and 5km fun run.
Lemao said they are expecting over 1 000 participants, 400 from outside the metro, who have already pledged to participate.
The routes are yet to be confirmed but Nhlapho promised it will be a safe race with traffic officials on high alert during the day.
Participants will receive race packs and there will be dehydration points stationed along the route.
At the launch, Kenny called for more investors to support events in the metro to grow the local economy, especially the township economy.
“To us, this is one of those events that we want to see ourselves taking Mangaung and putting it on another level. As we said with the Lemo Fest event, we are not going to end here, we are going to take it further,” he said.
‘There will also be packages given to participants’
An expo will also be held on Friday, 3 May 2024 to allow local business to display their stalls at the mall before the main event.
