A brief paddling history of the Dusi Canoe Marathon race

THE organisation of the FNB Dusi Canoe Marathon, to be held from Thursday 15 to Saturday 17 February, is today a very slick and well organised machine with strategically placed lifeguards and marshals on hand to assist paddlers who get into difficulty.

Air support from helicopters and media coverage is big business as images are streamed via the web.

But this has not always been the case.

The notion of racing down the uMsundusi and uMngeni rivers was born during World War II when Ian Player, sitting around a campfire in Italy tired and homesick, came up with the idea of a formal race downriver from Pietermaritzburg to Durban.

On his return to South Africa, he conducted an initial expedition, but this was abandoned halfway in 1950.

The next year, eight paddlers set off from Alexandra Park.

Six days, eight hours and 15 minutes later, Player was the only paddler to finish, having survived two days of low rivers followed by a flash flood and finally a night adder bite.

The eight paddlers were meant to race in pairs, but Player’s partner Miles Brokensha quit at Mfula Store on Christmas Eve, so when a ‘bedraggled and exhausted’ Player arrived in Durban, he was outside of the initial set of laws, but undisputedly the first person to ‘do the Dusi’.

Player won the next two races with Fred Schmidt before retiring unbeaten.

By the 1956 race, entries reached 48 starters and changes started to happen.

From its non-stop format, the race introduced compulsory overnight stops at Dusi Bridge and Khumalo’s Causeway.

For the first time the field of six doubles and 18 singles were set off in batches, on what was a desperately low river.

Sponsors and increased entries

In 1966 the Dusi scooped its first significant sponsor – the paddlers raced in bibs proclaiming ‘There is more in Milk!’.

Legendary Iron Man Jimmy Potgieter won that year with Clive Crawley.

The race entry topped 100 for the first time in 1967 when 112 paddlers started on a full river, with Cape brothers Roelof and Willem van Riet ready to start their grip on the race.

In 1975 the race was named the Olympic Motors Dusi, after a long run as the Milk Dusi.

In 1980, 666 paddlers started and only 401 finished, and in 1981 the race was sponsored by the multivitamin company producing Theragran M.

It was also the year which saw female and black paddlers competing for the first time.

Simon Mkhize became the first black paddler to finish the Dusi and Daphne Hawarden, paddling with her husband Andre, was the first woman to get onto the finishers roll.

In 1986 the race committee formalised the Dusi as a K2 championship event, to alternate with K1s each year.

Sponsor Hansa stepped in in 1987, bringing with it heightened media exposure and increased entries.

The ‘do the Dusi in the millennium year’ campaign saw entry numbers soar to 2 217 in 2000.

Close to 2 000 paddlers are expected to participate in this year’s race.

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