Nick Bester grew up tough.

When his father was tragically killed in a car accident, seven-year-old Nick and his mother lost their home and the family farm and spent years as nomads, staying with friends and family. Like his rugby-playing namesake father, Nick Junior was forced to toughen up and make his own luck.

While many succumb to such circumstances, Nick Bester Jr. turned his early childhood trauma into a competitive athletic career that earned him nicknames such as ‘Ysterman’ and ‘Ultraman’. He became a multiple Ironman triathlon champion; but when that wasn’t enough to satisfy him, he took on the runners at their own game.

“I wasn’t built for running,” says Bester, now 65. “I was around 72kg, and I was up against guys who sometimes weighed 20kg less than me. But I learned to believe in myself, and I think that was my biggest strength.”

In 1991, proving his bona fides as a runner, Bester won the Comrades Marathon. This breakthrough win set him on course to be one of the most popular local runners, in a decade when the Russian ultra runners started to make their presence felt. Bester was a symbol of good old-fashioned vasbyt, and South Africa loved him.

In 1997, Russian Dmitri Grishine looked a firm favourite for the win; but there was also the prancing tip-toe style of Charl Mattheus (who had won in 1992, but was later disqualified for taking banned medication), and the legendary Zithulele Sinqe – one of SA’s marathon legends, fresh from back-to-back wins at the Two Oceans.

To win again, Bester knew, he would have to pull out all the stops.

“I’d been seeing a sports psychologist for a few years, and went back to him ahead of the 1997 race,” Bester said. “He was the sports psychologist for (what was then) the Transvaal rugby team.”

“We came up with the idea of me being like a kamikaze pilot… going all out, even if I died.”

Andre Roux, the psychologist, set about designing a mental strategy for Bester that would help him throughout the race. “We came up with the idea of me being like a kamikaze pilot… going all out, even if I died,” Bester says. ““I used imagery like that – plus images of eagles for speed, and an ox for strength – along the way, to motivate me.” (To get an idea of Bester’s approach, go to YouTube.com and type in ‘Comrades Marathon 90km: personal mental preparation used by Nick Bester 1997’.)

By the time the race reached Hillcrest – with 36km to go – Bester, Mattheus and Sinqe were in the lead, with Grishine already out of the picture. The three traded pace-setting duties as they headed towards Kloof before Bester put in a big surge on the descent down Fields Hill, clocking successive kilometre splits of 2:52 and 2:48 min/km.

Experts such as Bruce Fordyce will tell you that Bester’s strategy appeared suicidal. Many a contender has run too fast down Fields Hill, and then ended up walking by the time the race hit the flats of Pinetown.

But not Bester. “I had rehearsed this, and didn’t feel any pain. I just wanted to get to that finish line first – that’s all I was thinking,” he says. “I just wanted to destroy the others.”

Bester may have opened up a gap down the famous Fields, but Mattheus and Sinqe both fought their way back to within a few metres of Bester as they approached Cowies Hill. But going up Cowies, Bester surged again, dropping Mattheus, while Sinqe suffered a bad patch and dropped further back. Again Mattheus rallied, and was back on Bester’s shoulder as they made their way through Westville.

“Charl suddenly appeared next to me,” Bester remembers, “and said, ‘Hey, did you see we just ran a world record for 80km?!’”

As the two raced towards the finish, pulling themselves up the drag towards 45th Cutting, Bester pushed again. Again he gapped Mattheus; and with 8km to run, the race seemed to have been settled. Bester led by some distance up to the top of the brutal Tollgate Hill.

But behind him, Mattheus was still lurking. “Charl told me later that he could see my legs were starting to buckle from behind,” Bester said. “That gave him a lot of encouragement.”

With only 4km left to run, Mattheus eventually surged past the flagging Bester and went on to win in 5:28.37, with Bester finishing two minutes back. Polish runner Jaroslaw Janicki was third; and Sinqe, who managed to fight back in the dying kilometres, placed fourth in his one and only Comrades.

“The only part of the race that we didn’t mentally prepare for was the last 5km,” Bester says now. “My mind left me, and I couldn’t push hard enough.”

By the time Bester retired from competitive running, the ‘Yster’ had amassed nine Comrades gold medals and six silvers. He and Sinqe became close friends, and went on to establish first the Harmony running club, and more recently the Nedbank running club. Sinqe died in a road accident in 2011, and Mattheus now lives in the United States.

Lessons from the Ysterman

VISUALISE: For his run in 1997, Bester’s family waited at the finish line, with his daughter dressed in red and his son in blue. Bester visualised a red pipe coming from his daughter that would transport the pain away when needed. When he felt he was flagging, he imagined a blue pipe from his son, filling him with power. Virtually every step of the race was visualised beforehand.

NO EXCUSES: Despite being much heavier than many of his competitors, Bester’s determination enabled him to overcome his physical disadvantages and compete with the best runners in the world.

MIND CONTROL: The brain is the strongest organ in the body. It can dictate how we feel, even when the body is struggling.

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