With the Corona virus halting not only sports but Countries around the World, many athletes have found this period tough as for the majority, races were what put food on the tables of many family’s homes.
With this in mind, Nedbank running club national team manager Nick Bester came up with the Nedbank running club social media race. “As you know the athletes aren’t racing now because of the virus and together with the team sponsors, now is the time that athletes need to come up with ways of still promoting the sponsors,” said Bester.
Apart from their amazing talents in running producing amazing feats on the roads, athletes worldwide still need to maintain a good social media presence in a world where followers and number of likes are viewed as status symbols to many. “As part of being a member of the Nedbank running club green dream team, it is expected to be present on social media to give more exposure to the team and its sponsors but at a time like this we need to come up with content even more with the sponsors still providing 100% support.”
Out of this, the Nedbank running club social media race started. From announcement of the lock down to 24 April, an online race took part where athletes were judged on their posts amongst other things. For the best, cash prizes were announced which stood as:
1st – R5000
2nd – R4000
3rd – R3000
4th – R2000
5th – R1000
Part of the rules included that any content that was posted which appeared from the media in print and television did not get counted towards the race. All content had to be done by the athletes themselves.
The content that the athletes came up was great, from home exercises to even cooking recipes featuring ingredients from Biogen and Futurelife, both sponsors of the team. They say there can only be one winner, but such was the amount of content that came through, there was a deadlock for first, with two athletes taking home R5000 each. The two victors were Sanelesiwe Mbanjwa and Irvette Van Zyl.
“The athletes really did great in promoting themselves and the sponsors on various social media platforms that we decided to also give out R500 each from position 6 to 12,” Bester said. The results the top performing online athletes were:
1. Sanelesiwe Mbanjwa
1. Irvette Van Zyl
3. Ntombesintu Mfunzi
4. Gerda Steyn
5. Chrizell Roberts
6. Fikile Mbuthuma
7. Ipeleng Khunou
8. Phillimon Mathiba
9. Sibusiso Nzima
10. Eric Ngubane
11. Edward Motihibi
12. Deanne Horn
Such was the success of the online race, Bester announced via the teams green dream team WhatsApp group that yesterday marked the start of a new Nedbank running club social media race. “It is a way of not only giving back to the sponsors in a time where no races are run but also to earn some extra money to go into the households of the athletes,” said Bester.