BERTOLD BOHMER (Armin Mueller Stahl) is a white, widowed, German émigré in his mid-60s who has been living in South Africa and coaching black runners for over 30 years. When he is replaced as coach by a much flashier and younger black man, GASA (Paterson Joseph), Bertold feels his life has lost its meaning. Even worse, his runners, whom he had been training for the grueling Comrades Marathon, are taken off long distance training and put into middle distance training programmes by Gasa. Everything Bertold has worked for has suddenly been destroyed.
During this bleak moment in his life, a young and beautiful Namibian woman, CHRISTINE (Nthati Moshesh), literally runs into his life. Noticing her by accident one day as she runs on her own, Bertold sees something special in her and begins to surreptitiously track her and time her runs. He makes several attempts to introduce himself, but because she’s an illegal alien, she flees from his every attempt.
However, when a police raid on Christine’s lodgings separates her from both her home and her other illegal friends, she has nowhere to go and is forced to contact Bertold. He immediately moves her into his house, giving her his bed, cooking for her, buying her clothes and spending his money to have her tested by the most modern medical sports clinic. She’s grateful for his devotion and attention, but his fierce, impersonal, machinelike approach to training turns her off, and despite all of her advancements in the field, resentment soon sets in.
But what drives Bertold the most, and what no one else knows, is that he, as a young man, twice failed to complete the Comrades Marathon.
At this point, Gasa also becomes aware of Christine, and he attends a party, which Bertold has thrown for Christine and several other black runners. While Bertold watches Gasa seduce Christine with his oily charm, Bertold’s landlords are spying on him, aghast at his new passion for socialising with blacks and (they assume in the case of Christine) bedding them. As things come to a head, with both Gasa and Bertold vying for her attention, Christine leaves Bertold’s house. She gives him her number where she can be reached and she goes to live a less restrictive life with friends of Gasa’s.
Christine assumes that Bertold will come looking for her, and that they will continue training, but with some of her personal wishes now being taken into consideration, she’s wrong. Bertold, intractable as ever, writes her off completely, because if he cannot completely control her — if she will not train his way only — he will not train her at all. He destroys all of his records and the files of her development, and all of the videos and books from his running library. In essence, he completely burns the records of his entire past and all of its associations with the one passion in his life. After the landlord throws him out of the house for being a kaffirboetie, Bertold appears to have no future at all.
Frightened that Bertold is about to do something drastic, his former black runners directly appeal to Christine to seek Bertold out, however, Gasa becomes possessive, giving her an ultimatum to choose between either him or Berthold.
Compelled to seek Berthold out, Christine ignores Gasa and though it takes a lot of work on both their parts to come to terms again, she and Bertold being to train for the marathon once more. This time, however, they train on Christine’s terms. Bertold can no longer control her and he has to come to accept that. As Christine begins to train on the Marathon course in preparation for the real race, however, she realises how difficult it truly is, and she discovers that Bertold was right to some extent — she’s taken the whole process too lightly.
In the marathon, Christine runs too fast but somehow survives the treacherous course. At the worst part of the race, she comes head to head with the favoured female runner — HILDA SNYMAN (Chantel Nativel) — who trips her up and nearly destroys the race for her. However, Christine recovers and wins the female trophy in record time. -- © 2000 VideoVision Entertainment
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