Sanlam Cape Town Marathon — Abbott World Marathon Majors Candidate

By Phil Dumontet, CEO, Laurel Innovations

From 9,000 to 27,000 finishers · Africa's first Major candidate

I recently had the privilege of sitting down with Clark Gardner — CEO and investor of the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon, chartered accountant turned entrepreneur, and the man leading the charge to bring Africa's first Abbott World Marathon Major to life. Clark is not a career sports executive. He's a problem-solver who looked at a continent of 1.4 billion people, 80% of the world's best elite distance runners, and zero world marathon majors — and decided to fix it. 

Here are the 10 lessons that stayed with me most.

01 — Purpose & Vision

This isn't just a marathon. It's an economic engine for a continent.

Clark didn't enter running through a love of sport. He entered through a love of impact. Sitting in Mallorca one day, he asked himself: how can this small island attract 11 million tourists while all of South Africa — with its wildlife, its people, its natural beauty — attracts only 10 million? His answer was sport events. Specifically, a marathon.

"This is an economic engine that we can create. It's not just a marathon. The person picking you up from the airport is a job. The person making your bed is a job. The person serving you at the restaurant — that's a job."

20,000 international runners means 20,000 hotel nights, 20,000 restaurant meals, 20,000 potential ambassadors who go home and tell their friends. Clark sees every entry not just as a bib number, but as a multiplier for a country with 13 million unemployed people.

Takeaway: Know the bigger "why" behind your event. The most powerful race organizations are building something well beyond the finish line.

02 — Leadership

Give your team a purpose bigger than the race itself

Clark is the first to say that running events don't require the deepest technical expertise. What they require is intensity — and you cannot sustain intensity without purpose. His team sacrifices relationships, sleep, and mental health to deliver at the level a Major demands. That level of commitment cannot be manufactured.

"You can't motivate a team to live up to that kind of intensity without giving them a great sense of purpose. This is about the city, about marathon running, about the country and the continent being the first major in Africa."

Africa has never had an Olympic Games. Never had a World Athletics World Championship. The Cape Town Marathon is the continent's first credible shot at something at this level — and that North Star is what keeps his team moving when the road gets hard.

Takeaway: The bigger and more authentic your purpose, the more your team will give when it costs them something.

03 — Race Design

Start from first principles — and design every single touchpoint

When Clark stepped in, the race had around 9,000 finishers. The foundations were good. But his approach was to go back to first principles on every single aspect of the event — entry management, personalized communication, expo experience, batch starts, course pinch-point engineering, sponsor protection, timing, race village flow. Nothing was assumed. Everything was questioned.

One example: at 32 kilometers, there's a pinch point in the streets of Cape Town. Rather than accept it, Clark's team reverse-engineered the batch start seeding specifically to prevent congestion at that exact spot. That's the level of precision he operates at.

Takeaway: Pick one touchpoint in your participant journey this year and redesign it from scratch — not incrementally, but from first principles.

04 — Crisis Management

Plan to stay in charge — before the crisis, not during it

In October 2025, 24,000 runners were set to race. 90 minutes before the gun, gale-force winds tore through the race village — toilets blown over, fencing down, hydration stations unable to be erected. Law enforcement made the call: cancelled. It was devastating.

The lesson Clark drew from it is one every race director needs to hear. In a crisis, the people who have the legal authority to cancel your event — law enforcement, disaster management, traffic — will default to self-preservation. They fear being fired. They fear criminal prosecution. If you haven't designed a protocol in advance that protects them too, they will make the most conservative possible call.

"You've got to plan to stay in charge. Design protocol and processes that keep you in control without putting those jobs or criminal prosecution at risk — because in a crisis, human behavior kicks in, and people go into self-preservation mode."

After the cancellation, Clark's team mapped 11 alternative route scenarios, four race village configurations, and drew up decision trees for fire, flooding, and wind — all pre-signed by the events committee. No more improvising under pressure.

Takeaway: Before your next event, map your crisis scenarios, design the protocols, and get every stakeholder to sign off in advance — not on the morning.

05 — Team Culture

Never waste a good crisis

Clark uses this phrase almost every day. When the October 2025 race was cancelled, his team was crucified — not just by disappointed runners, but by bloggers and journalists spreading untruths. People who had sacrificed everything for the race, who expected to be celebrated, were instead vilified. The emotional damage was real.

Clark's response, guided in part by a conversation with Chicago Marathon's Mike Nishi, was to pivot immediately into care mode. Rather than analyzing what went wrong operationally, his first job was looking after his people. Letting them down slowly. Reminding them of the purpose. Keeping the flame alive.

"We're going to be okay. The timeline is not definitive — it can be as long as it needs to be. But we're going to get there. We're bigger than this."

Takeaway: After a failure, your first job as a leader is your team. Operations can wait. People can't.

06 — Stakeholder Relations

The hardest relationship to manage is always the city — get them to buy into your why

Clark's most complex relationship has been with the City of Cape Town. Municipal officials had spent decades working with clubs, charities, and federations putting on events to their standard. Then an outsider arrived demanding no parked cars on 42 kilometers of route — something his own ops director initially called impossible — and pushing for road closures on national highways. The city's reaction was predictable: who is this guy?

Clark's answer wasn't to fight. It was to earn. The marathon invested in underprivileged schools along the route. It created 2,000 free entries for community runners. It built performance slots for local artists from disadvantaged neighborhoods. He changed the narrative from "privileged entrepreneur who thinks he knows better" to "this race belongs to Cape Town."

Takeaway: You can't strong-arm a city. Show your greater impact, invest in the community, and bring your stakeholders into the purpose.

07 — Authenticity

Don't try to be a better version of someone else's race — be the most authentic version of yours

When I asked Clark what Cape Town has that no other major can ever replicate, his answer was twofold and completely unambiguous. First: a trail event on Table Mountain at the same start-finish precinct as the road race. Within 500 meters of the start line you are on a UNESCO World Heritage site running through fynbos. No other major on Earth offers this. Second: the authentic African experience.

"We don't want a European race on African soil. Two thirds of the start line will always be African. The African spirit — the humanity, the love, the camaraderie — that is not spoken enough about. And we will never give that away."

At the start line, you'll hear singing and chanting. En route, spectators will offer you water sachets and want to talk with you. After the finish, you don't get chased out of the race village — you enter a celebration with a live band, a beer tent, and club tents. That's Cape Town.

Takeaway: Identify the one or two things about your race that can only exist where you are. Then protect them fiercely — never trade them for scale.

08 — Collaboration

Fast-track your learning by learning from other people's school fees

One of the unexpected gifts of the Abbott World Marathon Majors candidacy process has been access. Clark and his team now visit other majors, interrogate their operations, and absorb decades of earned wisdom. Boston is 130 years old. London is 50. The mistakes, the crises, the innovations — are now available to Cape Town for the cost of a conversation.

"We're fast-tracking our learning by learning from them, their errors, their successes. Find your people, collaborate, and be as generous as the majors have been to us. You should be learning 20, 30 times a year — not just from your one event."

His advice applies at every scale. If you run a 1,000-person race, find your tribe of 1,000-person race directors. Share your mistakes. Share your wins. The generosity compounds.

Takeaway: Identify three race directors at a similar scale to yours and commit to a regular knowledge-share. Your one event per year isn't enough reps to learn fast.

09 — Elite Strategy

Use your elite field to tell the story your race stands for

Eliud Kipchoge — the greatest marathoner who has ever lived — has never raced a marathon on African soil. Think about that for a moment. Clark lobbied him for two years before he said yes. The pitch wasn't prize money. It was purpose: come home. Run where the crowd screams your name in your own language. Be part of building something for the continent that produced you.

"80% of the world's best elite runners are from Africa, yet they've had to leave the continent to perform. Eliud has never experienced what it feels like to have his own people screaming for him. We get to change that."

Clark's elite strategy balances legends at the twilight of their careers with emerging Southern African runners who have never had the chance to compete shoulder to shoulder with the greats. He keeps the field tight — no men slower than 2:12, no women slower than 2:30 — so the racing stays electric rather than fragmented.

Takeaway: Your elite field is a storytelling tool. Ask: what narrative does this start line tell — and does it reflect the race you want to build?

10 — Legacy

Leaders stay in the background when things go well — and step forward when they don't

When I asked Clark what he wants to be remembered for, he paused. Then he said something I won't forget: "I think I would still be anonymous if we didn't have the cancellation. I really believe leaders should be in the background when we are celebrating success. The only reason I came out of my hole was because it was failure — and I needed to take the brunt of that."

"This is not raw capitalism. Entrepreneurship can be there for good. If we showed that business can create economic impact, that your sense of value in achieving that is greater than the financial reward — that would mean a lot to me."

Clark doesn't want a statue. He wants Africa to have a second story — one of success, excellence, and self-belief — told through sport. And if the Cape Town Marathon paves the way for an African Olympic bid, a World Athletics Championship, more majors on the continent — that's the legacy worth building.

Takeaway: Define your version of stewardship: what does leaving this race in a better place than you found it actually mean — and are you building toward it every day?

"The future of running is in Africa."

Clark's closing words — two seconds, no hesitation. A continent that produces 80% of the world's best distance runners is finally building the stage they deserve.