Duncan Mackay for the IAAF
5 June 2001 - London - Zola Pieterse the former two-time International Amateur Athletic Federation World Cross Country champion, is planning to relaunch her career in the hope of making an impact at the marathon.
Pieterse effectively stopped competing internationally after representing South Africa in the 1996 world cross country championships to start a family and also because she contracted chronic tick-bite fever, which affects sufferers in the same way as malaria. Homopathic treatments have brought the problem under control, allowing her to launch a comeback.
Pieterse is back in full training and has her sights set on the inaugural British 10 kilometres road race in London on July 22 as her first target. If that goes well, she hopes to run in the Great North Run on Tyneside in September and then make her marathon debut in London next April.
"I only started serious training in January," Pieterse said. "I thought I would give myself one last chance to do a good marathon."
Those who remember the thin barefooted teenager who made such an impact back in the mid-80s after she was given a British passport so she could run in the 1984 Olympics at a time South Africa was banned will be amazed to discover that, at 35, Pieterse is now, in athletic terms, considered a veteran.
Pieterse accepts that she will never again scale the heights she did in 1985 and 1986 when she won the World Cross Country title in consecutive years and also set a world record for the 5000 metres. She also established a series of British records that stood until Paula Radcliffe broke them. A fast marathon is her last unfulfilled ambition. "I'm old now but I think a realistic goal for me is to run a sub-2:30 marathon," said Pieterse.
