In this episode of the MYD Show we spoke with Bruce Fordyce, the marathon and ultra marathon athlete, best known for having won the South African Comrades Marathon a record nine times.
While in Namibia, Bruce sat down with the MYD Show to talk about social awareness and how individuals create for social change. Bruce is well known for having used his sport as a platform to stand up to the South African apartheid government.
“We students, particularity those like me, speaking selfishly I knew I could win this thing, I could win it, so I desperately wanted to run but we had to find a method of saying that we don’t approve of what Comrades has done associating itself with this whole Republic Day festival celebration. So we wore armbands. I wasn’t the only one wearing an armband, I just happened to be the prominent one, and so I won, with a record and that made quite a big statement. At the time, we were quite severely harassed by the security police, they drove up and down the route while we were running taking photographs of us. My seconds, the people who bring you your drinks and look after you in the race, one of them, his brother was in military intelligence, phoned him and said, ‘Just tell Bruce, he doesn’t take a drink from anybody, not from anybody, because he’s going to grab it and it’s going to have something in it.’”
In this MYD show podcast we find out:
- How Bruce became a record winning marathon runner
- Why Bruce used his sport to take a stand against the South African apartheid government
- What the experience was like to take this stand
- The most important advice Bruce ever received
Take a listen to the MYD Show with Bruce Fordyce, here :
https://soundcloud.com/99fm/the-myd-show-woke-with-bruce-fordyce