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Caster Semenya

Caster loses out on top sports gong; Serena takes itMONTE CARLO, Monaco: South Afri-ca’s Olympic women’s 800m champion Caster Semenya missed out on the World Sportswoman of the Year at the Laureus World Sports Awards.

American tennis legend Serena Williams took the top honour, but Semenya was happy to be in such esteemed company.

Semenya, 27, was accompanied by her wife, Violet Raseboya, and the pair were photographed on the red carpet at the event in Monaco at which sports stars are nominated by the media for excellence over the past year.

Semenya was wearing a grey suit, white shirt, a bow-tie and sneakers, while Raseboya wore a fitted black dress with silver embellishments.

Semenya said: “As an athlete, obviously we have goals, we have dreams, but this is one of the dreams that I dreamt, from young, watching sportsmen and sportswomen on top of

the world, being nominated, and then say one day, if I can be there, I will be fulfilled,” said Semenya.

Semenya said it was very special to be selected among the best in the world. “When you check the likes of Michael Johnson, for me, it’s a very special feeling. It’s someone that I looked up to since I’m watching what he has accomplished. It’s just amazing.”

Semenya was also up against Wimbledon champion Garbine Mug-uruza and an all-American quartet of Williams, 16-time world athletics championship medallist Allyson Felix, 19-year-old swimming sensation Katie Ledecky, and overall World Cup champion skier Mikaela Shiffrin.

Looking back at her career, Semenya, was quick to pick out the highlights. “I would say that Rio (Olympics in 2016) is one of my high-lights, and obviously back then (at the

World Championships in 2009) was the first time I made it to the scene. So those were the highlights of my life. But if you were a young girl, you know, I had to grow. I had to be mature.

“Winning in 2009 and winning in Rio are the best moments of my life.”

On her goals for 2018, Semenya added: “I’ll start with nationals, mid-dle of March.

“Then, obviously we will have the Commonwealth Games where I will also try the double again…” – African News Agency (ANA)

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SIBUSISO Vilane is climb-ing Everest this year. And when he’s finished, he’s going to run Comrades and then climb Kilimanjaro for

the Madiba Centenary edition of Trek4Mandela.

But before then, he’ll run the Two Oceans over Easter. It’s a stupendous amount of exercise, but Vilane is no ordinary person. The first black African to summit Everest, which he did in 2003, he repeated the triumph two years later from the other side.

Then he did the seven-summit challenge, knocking off the highest peaks on six other continents, in 2008, and went to the South Pole, with fellow mountaineer, Alex Har-ris. They walked from the coast of Antarctica all the way to the South Pole unassisted – a distance of 1 200km. They became the first – and to date – only South Africans to do this.

By 2012, Vilane had completed the triple poles (the two ends of the earth and the highest point), when he trekked to the North Pole.

He’s humble to the point of self-effacing, lithely built, but when he speaks the room quietens and everyone listens. There is an unmis-takeable authority that he exudes, even if you didn’t know who he was.

“I don’t climb mountains,” he tells a group of aspirant climbers at The Nest in the Drakensberg, “I walk up them.”

There’s a bit of nervous laugh-ter at his self-deprecation. The 40 hopefuls are in the Berg as part of this year’s Trek4Mandela, bidding to summit Kilimanjaro, Africa’s high-est peak at 5 895m.

The climb will be Vilane’s 23rd ascent of the Tanzanian peak – if you count last year’s double ascent on the Trek as two.

He pioneered the Trek4Mandela with Caring4Girls founder and social entrepreneur Richard Mabaso, after Mabaso phoned him in 2012 with his idea to scale the peak as a publicity stunt to raise awareness of the plight of poor girls forced to miss school because of their lack of sanitary pads during their monthly periods – and break the taboo associated with it.

The first year it was just the two

of them, it’s grown and now there are 40 people ready for their brief-ing before what will be for many of them their first climb in the Drak-ensberg, a “leg stretching” 22km hike up 1 000m and across the face of Cathkin Peak and Monk’s Cowl in the Drakensberg the next day.

“Don’t think about tomorrow,” Vilane cautions, “in the mountains we only focus on one day at a time.”

In the group are three of the six climbers who will be accompanying him to Nepal on April 2. Two of them are products of the Trek4Mandela project. They are going to climb with him Base Camp at Everest, and then he’ll spend the next 58 days building up his strength and acclimatising, before tackling the world’s highest mountain – without oxygen.

“It’s absolute madness to go back for a third attempt. I last summited nearly 13 years ago and then the curiosity entered my head, only a handful of climbers have done it without oxygen, can I?” he asks rhetorically afterwards, “I’m not interested in reaching the summit with oxygen – I’ve done that twice.”

Vilane is inspired by Reinhold Messner, the Austrian mountaineer who was the first climber to summit Everest without oxygen in 1978 and then the first mountaineer’s grand slam, summiting the world’s 14 8 000m peaks, half of which are in Nepal and the balance in Pakistan. Messner stunned the world’s doctors with his successful ascent without oxygen, disproving medical theory that the rarefied air, only 30%of the oxygen that there is at sea level, would disorient climbers and then kill them on sustained exposure.

But Vilane’s not foolhardy either, he will carry oxygen with him in his bid, but if he feels he has to use it on the mountain’s death zone above 8 000m that’s when he will turn back and go down. “The summit will be when my body says no more.”

There’s every chance though that he will succeed in his quest. He is in incredible shape and training hard. If he does, the fairytale will continue just like it did when he first sum-mited Everest back in 2003.

Then, he was on a whim. He had been challenged to climb Everest after being told by a guest at the Malolotja nature reserve in Swazi-land where he worked that he had

all the makings of a natural moun-taineer. Vilane had dismissed the thought, he’d never even seen a pic-ture of the mountain, but the man, John Doble, asked if he would do it if money wasn’t an option.

Vilane said yes.He started by climbing the peaks

in the Drakensberg, followed by his successful first summit of Kiliman-jaro in 1999. In 2002, having forgotten about Everest, he received a letter from Doble.

Doble had found a group going to Nepal to summit Everest for the 50th anniversary of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s historic ascent, but Vilane first had to join a Trek-king group going to Khumbu valley, near Everest for practice ascents on the nearby peaks.

Vilane applied for his annual leave from the game lodge, without telling anyone why or where he was going. “I didn’t think they’d let me.”

He hadn’t trained, but he success-fully summitted Pokalde and Island Peak, both over 6 000m. He was in, but had to raise $40 000.

“I told John, I’ve seen Everest, I want to go.”

He was sponsored by a Good Sam-aritan who believed in his dream and eight months later he made history by getting to the top of Everest in 2003. “I had to repay their faith in me, the mountain was kind to me.”

Two years later, in the company of legendary explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Harris, the second South African to climb the seven summits, Vilane became the first black African to summit Everest from the south and the more tech-nically challenging north route.

This year’s bid will be his fourth visit to the mountain and his third attempt, but it won’t be his last.

In 2020, he wants to fulfil his dream to lead the first all-African

team to summit Everest. He’s talking with mountaineers on the continent to create Africa’s own seven sum-mits, iconic peaks and destinations that are all in East Africa; Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya.

“I was joking about taking a 7SummitsAfrica team to climb Everest with some friends, who said ‘we can make it happen. We had our first meeting in January to discuss and plan the project. We want to promote Africa. Africa has all the resources needed to train climb-ers for Everest. I was climbing in Uganda and I thought the glacier I was on was just like the Alps (in Europe).”

The technical challenges are there too.

“Mt Kenya was one of my tough-est mountains to climb,” he says, “In fact, I would like to do K2 (the world’s second highest peak) because of the technical skills I have learnt over the years, which ultimately helped

me successfully summit Mt Kenya.”Vilane is married to Nomsa. The

couple have been wed for 23 years and have four children; three girls and a boy.

“Tenzing once told his son, ‘I climb mountains so that you don’t have to’,” Vilane smiles.

That hasn’t exactly been the case for him, he summited Kilimanjaro with his eldest daughter Setsabile when she was 18. “If any of them wanted to keep on and climb moun-tains, I’d be there for them.”

Vilane climbs mountains not just because they’re there as George Mallory once famously uttered, but because they make him feel closer to his creator. “It’s better to be on moun-tains thinking of God, than to be in church thinking of mountains,” he quips. “I connect in nature.”

Climbing mountains is also a great driver for charity, like Caring-4Girls, while Trek4Mandela opens doors to people who have never

thought of climbing mountains, even less going hiking – six of them are now going to Everest’s base camp with him in less than six weeks.

He’d been listening to the radio while he was driving, about the plight of poor girls and the blight of menstruation.

“The thing that got to me was that even the girls themselves don’t help each other but embarrass each other, even in class and that leads to most girls opting to stay at home during menstrual cycle… and then Richard phones me with this idea.

“In Africa, the majority of people if it’s a woman talking about any-thing related to women’s issues no one will listen, it is just taken for granted) but if men are talking about such matters then people will listen. Even Mama Graça Machel said the same,” he said of his motivation to help, to make a difference and break the taboo around the subject. This year he’s climbing on behalf of his sponsors – Sports for Social Change Network – to raise funds to meet the educational needs for girls

Last year he did the double sum-mit on Kilimanjaro hoping it would move a donor to pledge more funds to Caring4Girls. It was gruelling, it was exhausting. When he got back to base camp after the first summit, he wasn’t able to get some sleep and recover before he joined the next group for the ascent.

He won’t do it this year. He can definitely do it physically, but he needs it to be for a cause. “If some-one pledges R1 million, to Caring-4girls, I’d do the triple this year. Imagine how many girls’ lives we could change?”

● To know more about Trek4Man-dela or donate towards Caring4Girls, please contact Nkateko Mabale on e-mail: nkateko@imbumbafounda-tion.org or call: +27 (0) 11 883 0379.

Sights on the peak for a good causeVilane set to climb Everest to raise funds for girls’ education

KEVIN RITCHIE

Sibusiso Vilane and Richard Mabaso. Picture: NelsoN MaNdela FouNdatioN

Vilane has summited Mount Everest twice, and plans to do so again.

THERE are many things you learn on the mountain.

I learnt that I didn’t pack properly. One pair of socks for a two-day hike is several pairs too few. One pair of shorts, when you’ve just lost your footing in an ice-cold stream is one pair too few – especially when they dry with a wonderful tea stain across your backside.

I learnt that while Coca Cola might be the bane of stressed mothers with hyperactive kids, it’s mother’s milk for fat unfit 50 year olds. I also learnt that five people can share a can of it – and get enough of a sugar rush for the next hill.

I learnt many other lessons on the mountain too, but most of all I learnt to be myself in the company of others, to think about others before myself.

To enjoy the journey and for-get about the destination.

It’s a key part of the prepar-ation for the Trek4Mandela. In five months’ time, the mountain won’t be in the central Drak-ensberg but in northern Tanza-nia, Africa’s highest point; the 5 895m Kilimanjaro.

There won’t be anytime for selfishness, not when there’s the issue of altitude to contend with. The aspirant climbers stand up, introduce themselves and share with the rest of us why they’re doing this – often at great personal sacrifice in terms of time, physical train-ing and money, paying and fund raising.

Some are doing it for the bucket list tick of climbing Kili, but all are doing it to make a dif-ference to girls who would other-wise miss school a few days each month and imperil their ability of eventually matriculating and perhaps breaking the spiral of poverty.

Almost to an individual their stories are inspirational, heart-felt. Trek4Mandela though is also about taking people who would never have thought about climbing a mountain and get-ting them out into the open.

Preparation for Trek4MandelaKEVIN RITICHIE

Kevin Ritchie ends 22km-Monk’s Cowl hike, Drakensberg.

Picture: Mags Natasen.