At a casual glance these images appear cheerfully innocent, belying some 2,000 km of vasbyt, anxious build-up, bleeding rose hip scratches, tumbling tufts, boiling pulses and the stress of longing for that last right hand corner and the ‘never-arriving’ finish banner.
At 6:55 on Saturday morning defending Rhodes Run champions Kallie Burger and Leilani Scheffer flanked the last of our 1989 pioneers, last man standing, Sham Singh.
Some 4½ hours later Kallie became a three-time winner and 40 minutes later Leilani secured her fourth consecutive win.
Both returned to the finish line and shortly after 3pm they greeted Sham when he crossed the line to complete his 31st Rhodes Run, the only person to have completed every Rhodes Run since inception.
So the 2 wins, 30 finishes and 3 wins became 3 wins, 31 finishes and 4 wins.
Certainly a unique pair of images captured by Craig Muller of Backyard Adventures.
