THE RUNNING BOYS
Hailing from a small town in the Cape, brothers Nadeel and Adrian Wildschutte are preparing to run the world By Lyndon Julius | Photography: Skhu Nkomphela
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rom the small town of Ceres, about two hours outside Cape Town, two brothers, took up long-distance running during their later years of high school. The brothers, Nadeel and Adrian Wildschutte, would take part in athletics and cricket during the summer; in winter, they could be found on the rugby field. The elder of the two, Nadeel, was especially fond of sport, participating in every sporting code he could. Now, Nadeel is completing his postgraduate qualification at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) while younger brother
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Adrian is completing his Masters in Logistics and Supply Chain Management at Florida State University in the United States. “When it was cricket season, I would play cricket, and when it was winter, I would play rugby,” Nadeel says in an exclusive interview with Blue & Gold. “It was during matric that coach Moos Hartnick introduced me to middle-distance running. He immediately identified my shortcomings and the areas where I needed to improve. Things happened so fast after that and six months of training later, I was in the Boland team.”
Younger brother Adrian followed in his brother’s footsteps around six months after Nadeel took up running and claims to have joined Nadeel after boredom got the better of him while waiting on rugby, his preferred sporting code at the time. “I used to play rugby for part of high school and I was bored at home,” Adrian says. “With homework and chores done, and no rugby practice, I just decided to go to training with Nadeel. It was really difficult at first but I pushed myself hard and found that I really enjoyed it. People also said I was good at it. I wasn’t really into running but I guess boredom
