The newly-elected deputy president of Border Athletics, Fezeka Nkomonye, who is one of four children, all of whom followed the example of their mother and took to 100m and 200m sprinting while at school, told the Daily Dispatch in an interview this week that she struggled to do the longer 400m races.

Given where she is today, that seems hard to follow.

At school, Nkomonye also played football, as a goalie. It was, she says, "the athletic foundation that kept me active in standards 9 and 10".

The coach then wanted her to move to the number 5 jersey, as the central defender, or centre half, but she did not want that position and so after two years, she gave up football. Strong-willed as always.

When she finished school and went to varsity at Westville, Durban, she swapped to playing women's rugby, and for four years she played in the number eight jersey, with being selected to the KZN team the highlight.

Nkomonye preferred sports that were not female-only, but which fell into both the realm of male and female competition, albeit separately.

In 2009, she moved back into running when she found herself in Qonce, where she joined the relatively new Buffalo Road Running Athletics Club.

She was also now a full-time politician representing the ANC at the provincial legislature in Bhisho.

Sport remained important to her and she started evaluating young runners, assisting them with transport, nutrition, footwear and more.

Still, she always preferred to downplay her position in politics.

After some time, she moved to the heart of Buffalo City and at first joined Vitality, but soon decided it was a remote-type club and she wanted one that was local and affiliated directly to Border Athletics.

That is when she signed on with Chillie Runners, hoping to not be too conspicuous, which was a tall ask of this diminutive livewire.

When Nkomonye turned 40, she made a "splash" with a 40km charity run starting 2km away from the Cobongo junction on the N6.

She raised funding through that for three netball facilities, takkies for the netball and other sports players, bras and any necessities for budding sportsmen and women.

She had, meanwhile, entered to run a first Comrades Marathon in 2024, but further decided to sign on as a charity entry, raising money in aid of cancer awareness.

Nkomonye found that running for a cause kept her on track and gave others a voice.

Just being there for those in need helped fulfil a purpose without drawing upon political status.

Will the woman who says "I cannot even remember how many marathons I have run" be at the 100th Comrades Marathon?

You bet she will, and while this will be her third Comrades, there is no certainty thereafter that the 100 and 200m sprinter will still be running 90-100km on one day annually.

Betting against it, however, would be equally fool hardy as it was her "never say die" attitude, which saw her straddle the divide in the first instance.