Barefoot Runner On The Solitary Road To Fame

Zola Budd Pieterse is a South African middle-distance and long-distance runner who competed at the 1984 Olympic Games for Great Britain and the 1992 Olympic Games for South Africa, both times in the 3,000 metres. In a segment titled, ‘How to keep running and winning’ at the 6th FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit held as a virtual event on March 8 and 9, the “barefoot runner”, as she is known, joined from the United States to tell CNBC Africa anchor Zinathi Gquma why she got into athletics.
“I enjoyed the solitude of running,” she began. “It was not a conscious choice to become a professional athlete. It just happened. I put all my effort into my running. I was drawn to the solitude of the running experience, and still am, to this day.”
Running barefoot had its setbacks though. “I lost a few sponsors as I wasn’t wearing shoes…” she said, “but if you run barefoot, your biomechanics is different from running in shoes.” More in this interview.
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