Stephen Mokoka
South African long-distance runner
Stephen Mokoka (born 31 January 1985) is a South African long-distance runner who competes in races ranging from 3000 metres to the 50 km distance. He formerly held the 50 km world record. He is a four-time medalist at the Universiade and has represented South Africa internationally in road, cross country, and track events. He represented South Africa in the marathon at the 2012 London Olympics.
Career
Stephen began competing internationally in 2005 and came ninth over 10,000 metres at the 2005 Summer Universiade. At the African student championships in 2006, he was third over 5000 metres and finished as runner-up in the 10,000 m. He won back-to-back South African universities titles (2006/2007) and won his first global level medal at the 2007 Summer Universiade, taking the bronze medal in the 10,000 m.
He gained his first senior international selections the following year, running at the 2008 IAAF World Cross Country Championships and the 2008 IAAF World Half Marathon Championships. He made significant improvements to his times in the 2009 season, including a 5000 m personal best of 13:44.22 min at the Yellow Pages Durban meeting and a 10,000 m track best of 28:48.73 min. He won the 10,000 m national title in March and then managed to finish in 32nd place at the 2009 IAAF World Cross Country Championships.
The public source identifies “Stephen Mokoka” as south African long-distance runner. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Stephen, Mokoka and South.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stephen Mokoka” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.