Mumbai to Maritzburg: How India is leading international charge at Comrades 2023

Of roughly 18 000 runners who line up for the start of the 2023 Comrades Marathon in Pietermaritzburg on Sunday, the largest contingent of international participants will come from India.

There are 403 Indian athletes - 361 males and 42 females - on the official start list for this year's race. Zimbabwe, with 255 runners, has the second most.

At the Comrades Expo in Durban on Friday, where runners streamed in to register officially, the Indian presence was noticeable.

Their national cricket team may have been stumbling against Australia in the final of the ICC World Test Championship in London 14 000 km away, but none of that mattered to these runners.

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While the Indian visitors come from all parts of the country, a lot of them are travelling from the Maharashtra state, where Mumbai is the capital city.

"For any runner, if there is a marathon as prestigious as this, they will want to go take part in it," 49-year-old GB Waman told News24.

"South Africa is one of the best places to do this, because this is the toughest and longest ultra-marathon in the world. Anyone who runs marathons will have dreams to come and do Comrades."

Waman is in South Africa as a group of 11 runners from the Young Runners' Club. Before this, his longest run has been a 65km practice run at 1 100m elevation as practice for the Comrades.

"Every year, we have wanted to come," he added.

"We have been running together in India for seven to eight years. We have done marathons in India, but this is one of the most prestigious marathons in the world.

"We have seen it on YouTube, and many of our friends have already done it in their earlier years, so we thought, why not? We are