Welcome to the “Ian Syster – SA Marathon Champion – story – Fairytales do still happen” Time-to-Run source
Ian Syster died as a result of a car crash on the 25 December 2004 – May he Rest in Peace

SA Marathon Champion 2001
25 year old Ian Syster, the new SA Marathon Champion of Atlantic Athletic Club, has burst onto the South African marathon scene like a breath of fresh air. His run into the record books by winning the SA title on his debut is something to behold.

At a time when all around him was showing him despondency, his coach George Benjamin believed sufficiently in him to continue pushing Ian to believe in his dreams. While it would have been easy for Ian Syster to slide into oblivion and become another statistic; in the depressive surroundings he has been struggling to get ahead of since he moved from Port Albert in 1995, he chose to give the big one a final crack.

And crack it he did, winning the SA 42km Champs in a time of 2Hr 13min 30sec and with it a whopping R25.000, an amazing amount of money to an athlete who ran the race in a borrowed pair of running shoes and who has been unemployed for a lot longer than he would like to remember. The amazement of this run is that he does not have a background to running and he is not one of those athletes who has stepped up from the track or who has a fast half marathon to boot, on the contrary his PB’s are nothing special. There was nothing warranting the Western Province Team selectors to take a chance on selecting him for the team to the SA Championships, unfortunately he had no record for them to risk selecting him for the WPARR team. And due to this Ian had to endure a long bus trip and an uncomfortable night’s rest before the event. Not to fear there are plenty of great athletes who went on to achieve great things on the back of hardship, Arturio Barrios for one slept on the floor the night before his first win on the American road running circuit and he went on to become an enigma in his time as well as a few world records to boot, hopefully Ian will be able to join them in scaling the great heights.

The last athlete, that springs to mind who showed such potential over the marathon distance in the Western Cape was Willie Afrika (Bellville AC), whose personal best was not of such a high calibre, and to mention another was Ron Boreham (VOB). The reason these two athletes are mentioned was because they made marathon running their speciality and they continued to succeed and improve at the distance on each outing, a feat not many Cape athletes have achieved over the 42km distance.

Time-to-Run watches with great interest and the utmost support in wishing Ian the best of luck in his pursuits to achieving the heights all the great athletes have dreamt of for themselves.

Update: Ian Syster has realised his potential over the distance, and ran 2:07:06 at the London Marathon in 2002. He has now moved into echelons of one of the top marathon runners in the World and recently placed 7th at the Paris 2003 Championships. He has also improved all his times from 5K upwards, however none of those times equate to a 2:07 marathon. A man made for the distance.