Kusche Shatters the 18-Year Up Record as Steyn Takes a Fifth Comrades
George Kusche ran 5:15:56 to demolish the 18-year-old Comrades up-run record on the 99th edition, with the top five all going under the old mark. Gerda Steyn won a record fifth title in 5:44:53, breaking her own up record and banking more than R2 million.
What happened
The 99th Comrades Marathon — the 50th official up run — turned into a record demolition. George Kusche won the men's race in 5:15:56, erasing a course record that had stood for eighteen years, while Gerda Steyn claimed a fifth Comrades title and her fourth in a row in 5:44:53, breaking her own up-run record by almost five minutes. On a near-perfect morning over the 85.8km from Durban to Pietermaritzburg, the front of both races ran faster than anyone ever has on the climb.
Men's race
The wildcard-laden men's preview promised an open race. What it produced was a coronation at speed. George Kusche, the 27-year-old Nedbank runner and former sub-four-minute miler, crossed in 5:15:56 — taking nearly nine minutes off Leonid Shvetsov's legendary 2008 up record of 5:24:49, a mark many believed would outlast the people chasing it.
Kusche's run reframes what is possible on the climb to Pietermaritzburg. Just a year ago he finished 12th on his Comrades debut, having only recently moved up from the track. On Sunday he turned that apprenticeship into the fastest up run in the race's history.
Behind him, the record fell like dominoes: the entire top five dipped under Shvetsov's old time. Defending up-run champion Piet Wiersma of the Netherlands was second in 5:19:36, and South Africa's Mbuti Mollo completed the podium in 5:21:31. American Charlie Lawrence ran into sixth in 5:27:08.
Women's race
The women's race was the question with the famous answer everyone expected — but Steyn refused to make it routine. The 34-year-old, unbeaten at Comrades since 2019, pushed to a winning time of 5:44:53, improving the up record of 5:49:46 she set in 2024 by almost five minutes. It is her fifth title and her fourth consecutive victory, and it cements her as the dominant figure of the modern Comrades era.
Zimbabwe's Nobukhosi Tshuma ran a superb race for second in 5:53:36, with South Africa's Irvette van Zyl — flagged as a contender in the preview — taking third in 6:02:30. American Courtney Olsen was the first overseas woman home in seventh (6:11:20).
The cheques
The richer 2026 purse paid out in full for Steyn, who stacked bonus on bonus: R925,000 for the win, plus a course-record bonus and a fastest-average-pace bonus that pushed her day's earnings beyond R2 million. Records, it turns out, are good business at Comrades — and on Sunday, almost everyone at the front was setting them.
The bigger picture
This was Comrades at its fastest. An 18-year-old up record didn't just fall — it was beaten by five men at once, led by a runner who couldn't crack the top ten twelve months ago. And Steyn, quieter in her dominance but no less ruthless, keeps moving her own ceiling, now with five titles and a second up record to her name.
The numbers belong to the elite. The day belongs to the 21,000-plus who left Durban in the dark and spent the next twelve hours finding out what they're made of on Polly Shortts. That's the magic of the Ultimate Human Race: the same start line for the record-breaker and the first-timer. If Sunday lit a fire, channel it — our guides are built for exactly that kind of consistency, and there's a race near you waiting for a start line of your own.