8: Ernst Van Dyk, a legend of wheelchair racing, bids farewell to the sport.
As the finishers at this year's TCS New York City Marathon streamed across the finish line, for one man, it was to mark the end of a marathon racing career that has spanned three decades. Ernst Van Dyk is a giant of wheelchair racing, and this November, he completed his final Major.
It brought an end to a glittering career, one that has seen him win 13 Majors, including an incredible 10 Boston Marathons, with nine of those wins coming in the first 11 races of the 21st century!
It was last April, in the knowledge that this was to be his last season as an elite competitor, that Ernst spoke to us to reflect on his many achievements on Boylston St, during his remarkable career.
“I realised in my first year (in 2000) that this [Boston] could be my type of course,” said van Dyk, who began his elite career as a swimmer and track racer in the 1992 Barcelona Paralympics.
“I’m probably the heaviest guy in the field, so I could use my explosive power to get the most out of the downhills and roll up the uphills and then press on at the top, but I also knew I needed to train and prepare specifically for Boston.
“I could see it working really well for me and decided that was where I would invest my pre-season time. I would finish New York in November and the rest of the world would be going into winter, whereas we were going into summer in South Africa, so I used those four months to work hard and arrive at my peak for the season in Boston in April.
“Training involved a lot of explosive plyometric weight training, then optimising my chair and monitoring my weight to make sure I didn’t go in too light.”
He collected his 10th Boston win in 2014, at the age of 41 and now, having celebrated his 50th birthday in April, he bows out as one of the most decorated wheelchair athletes in the history of the sport.
And what next for the man from Ceres, in the Western Cape of South Africa? Van Dyk continues to be active presence behind the scenes, looking for ways to push the sport further into the limelight. When the Abbott World Marathon Majors added a professional wheelchair series to the able-bodied competition in 2016, it was Van Dyk who was in the vanguard of the movement to bring it to fruition.
“In the background through all those years (before 2016), a few of us were working hard with the race directors to improve the prize money, the level of professionalism, the integration of our athletes into the professional side of things. We would just get to know the race directors better, have a drink with them and push them on all of that.
“A lot of time went into that, so when the Majors happened, it was the culmination of all that work to make them see it as a professional, marketable sport.
“It was like, ‘we’ve done it, we’ve finally arrived.’ I was in the press conference in Boston when it started and I said: ‘Now a young athlete can aspire to be a professional wheelchair racer and make a living out of it.’ It really felt good.”
It's the stars of the future who will benefit the most from the legacy of Ernst Van Dyk, a man who has spent his entire life overcoming adversity and will hopefully now prove to be an inspiration for those who wish to see their name written in the history books, alongside his.
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