The Two Oceans Marathon, hosted annually in Cape Town, is a premier ultra-marathon in Africa and globally. The 51 st edition scheduled for 8-11 April 2020 however three weeks prior it was announced that the event would be cancelled. The decision to cancel was not a popular one and given all the stakeholders involved it was also challenging. Drawing on primary and secondary data, this paper considers factors leading to the decision to cancel, stakeholder engagement and associated organizational and socioeconomic impacts. Primary data included key informant interviews with the race director and stakeholders. The findings reveal that the last minute decision to cancel came at a huge cost to the event amidst growing uncertainty, however it is still viewed as the right decision. Regarding lessons learned, race organizers highlighted critical areas including process changes and stakeholder management. A more comprehensive risk management approach is also required.
The killing of George Floyd sparked mass protests worldwide and forced all facets of society, including sport, to reexamine race, racism and inequality. Given South Africa's post-apartheid transition from institutionalized racial segregation to a democracy in 1994, transformation has been prioritized. However, nearly 30 years post-apartheid South African sport is still struggling to transform. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has given impetus to many prominent South African sportspersons to raise their voices. This paper, drawing on narrative inquiry aims to better understand the experiences of black cricketers in South Africa in the wake of BLM. Personal, radio and webinar interviews with leading players and administrators, media reports and social media forums were used to collect data. A thematic analysis was followed and four key themes emerged from the data were: critiques of a rainbow utopia; the timing of the critique; conundrums of quotas and breaking the system.
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