It’s half past five on a Thursday morning, the sun barely over the horizon. A mist swirls between the 25 canoes packed onto the banks of the Msunduzi River at the Natal Canoe Club in Pietermaritzburg. The paddlers in Group A, the best in African river racing, are already sweating. It’s very humid early. Some stretch, others check their canoes for the last time. They stare straight ahead, focus as sharp as a needle; they head off.
This race draws tens of thousands. Only 1,000 qualify, fewer make it to the finish line. This is how Africa’s toughest river race has run since 1951. It’s a journey across 119 kilometers of wild and treacherous waters in the searing heat of the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province.
The Dusi Marathon was born around a campfire in Italy, during World War II. South African soldier Ian Player looked into the flames and came up with the idea of a downriver race. At the time, Player was in the 6th South African Armoured Division attached to the American 5th Army. It took six years after the war was finished for Player to organize the Dusi and he was the only one to finish it. It took him six days, eight hours and 15 minutes. He survived two days of low rivers, a flash flood and a night adder bite.
These days it takes paddlers less time. Each year it changes between singles and pair races. Among the thousands, Andrew Birkett and partner Sbonelo Zondi were the first to finish this year’s race in seven hours and 43 minutes, 10 minutes off the fastest time ever.
“The whole journey has been amazing! I’m super chuffed, especially with our discipline over this last year, and it’s a really special feeling to have won. It almost feels like this is the first Dusi I’ve ever won because of the whole change in start procedure here on day three and the finish is a really amazing experience,” says Birkett shortly after standing in triumph as his canoe crossed the finish line.
Birkett has now won it four times. For Zondi, the win meant more. He crashed out in the singles race last year after leading into the final day.
This year, records were broken in the women’s category. Abbey Ulansky, known as the Dusi Queen, clinched her ninth pole position when she crossed the line with partner Robyn Kime, called the Dusi Princess, making it their third victory in a row.
“I’ve just finished my masters two weeks ago which has made the build up to this year’s race quite challenging. Now that the Dusi is done, and my studies are done, I’m free and my boyfriend and I are going traveling,” says Kime.
When most people would take a break at a hotel in Mauritius, Kime’s idea of a holiday is traveling on a yacht from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro and then going mountain climbing in Bolivia and Peru. Ulansky announced she is retiring from competitive racing now that she has a family to look after.
Day 1
A gunshot cracks in the distance. The 25 canoers in Group A flail with their paddles at a mad dash from Camps Drift. Around the corner is the Ernie Pearce Weir, a narrow meter-high drop into a wetland piled with river rocks and rimmed with spectators.
The fastest have more room, the rest pack like sardines down the narrow fall. To the cheers of families and boys screaming school war cries, the canoes scrape each other in the muddy water. Paddlers swear as they are thrown into reeds, rocks and cameramen. Those who escape swiftly, gain a few seconds.
The sun rises and the heat is even more oppressive. Seconders, or team helpers, mostly friends and family, run down the riverside with buckets of iced water and sponges for the racers. Water squeezed from the sponges turns to steam in the blink of an eye.
At the end of the day’s race, Nkosi Mzolo, a member of the Soweto Canoe & Recreation Club (SCARC), in Johannesburg, recovers in the shade. SCARC are more used to paddling through sewage and fighting off angry fishermen at their home turf, the Power Park Dam. It’s a world away from the clean air of KZN.
Where most competitors will travel back to Pietermaritzburg to rest and then leave at 4AM for Day 2, Mzolo will go home to see his mother where he grew up, five kilometers from the end point.
“The hardest thing about the Dusi is running eight kilometers with a 22 kilogram canoe on your back. You have to train running with the boat,” says Mzolo.
The man, who spends every moment he can on the water, spends the rest of his time saving lives. He’s been a paramedic for four years, and is studying to be a doctor.
On one Dusi race, Mzolo needed a medic of his own. Mzolo hit the Ernie Pearce Weir along with six other canoes. Mzolo went under. The other canoes went over him. When he surfaced he knew two ribs were cracked and he was forced to forfeit the race. This time around he finished the day in 12th, a long way off Birkett and Zondi.
“I’ll never miss a Dusi, its fun but it’s really hard,” says Mzolo.
SCARC helps children in Soweto get into canoes. The effort has paid off; among them are eight of the most promising canoeists competing in this year’s Dusi, he says.
Day 2
The race pushes through the Valley of a Thousand Hills, a mountainous countryside littered with rondavels (Southern African-styled huts) and roaming cows. On dirt roads that rarely see rubber, convoys of 4x4s stretch from one side of the valley to the other. People washing clothes in the river get caught up in the action and cheer as the paddlers fly past.
“One of our biggest worries was making it to Inanda Dam in one piece. There are some treacherous rapids like the Washing Machine where you have to slide over a rock which is a hazard. Many guys have lost their lead in waters leading up to the dam,” says competitor Calvin Hellens.
“Every second counts in the Dusi. Most people have to start the race with a new canoe. It lowers the risk of it cracking. By the end, it looks like an old one,” says Hellens’ crew member Kate Swarbreck. The two compete in the mixed category in a canoe that cost them R6,000 ($550).
You can pay up to R20,000 ($1,800) for a top of the range model, they explain. Some of the stranger costs are for carbon fiber paddles, which break frequently on rocks. Seconders often throw spare paddles from bridges to the racers below.
The paddlers are more frightened of water hyacinth than the Inanda Dam. Thieves stole a cable holding the river weeds a few days before. Organizers had to think fast. Their solution was to drive a speedboat to make a channel through the choking weeds. With weeds overcome, the race is set for the final day.
Day 3
The unforgiving heat roasts on the final day. Although it is a much shorter distance, it is by far the most exciting with nine rapids, says Swarbreck. Another disadvantage for the leaders is that they must wait for the entire field to begin, before they can paddle on.
At 10:45AM, with temperatures well into 30 degrees, Birkett and Zondi leave the Inanda Dam with a nine-minute lead. The winners take no chances with the rapids and opt to use the optional portages—that is getting out of the water and carrying the canoe rather than risk foundering on the rocks.
Danger lurks in the water. A number of canoes shatter and sink in the rapids of Day 3. In 6th place, Jacques Theron and Shaun Griffen’s canoe splits in half on the rocks of the Tops Needle Rapids, a few kilometers into the day. They are seen running on the road, carrying half a canoe each, near Molweni Causeway, half an hour later. No one knew where they were going or what they were doing. A seconder comes to help but the two turn them away. Four and a half hours later they cross the finish line in Durban on foot.
There is also danger out of the water. Children pelt Anna Adamova and her partner Abby Addie, second in the female category, with stones 20 kilometers from the end of the race. Adamova finishes the race with blood pouring down her face. She goes for emergency care after the finish line.
That sums up the grit you need to survive the Dusi, Africa’s ultimate adventure race. Surely the soldier paddler Ian Player would have approved.