Thursday 6 February 2020 NEWS YOU CAN USE FREE Rufus’s legacy kept alive Nomaqhawe Mtebele since a young age and can today run 3 event had been standing since 2001. because he started coaching me when I
[email protected] km. “Coach Rufus was strict but also a “I’ve known Oom Rufus my whole life was 16. This was a critical age and I could very loving person. He saw my talent and but I started training with him full time have gone another way like other teenage Although the recent death of coach- motivated me to give my best every time. I in 2015. He was really tough, but he boys if it had not been for his infl uence,” extraordinaire, Rufus Botha, caught the was acknowledged as an athlete who had cared because he wanted each of us Ramokone said. people of Bloemfontein by surprise, it is developed the most for two years in a row. to succeed. It was after I had started “I will always remember him for his clear that his legacy stays alive through I was Coach Rufus’s ‘Yster’,” said Wilson. training with him that I began participating jokes, which he would include whenever all the athletes he has trained during his In 2019, Arina Nicholaisen represented in disabled body sports. Before that, I he had to do announcing. Whenever decades-long career. Courant spoke to a South Africa at the World Para Athletics used to ride horses as an able bodied something happened, he would try to few of the runners who remember “Coach Junior Championships in Nottwil, athlete.