Afterwards, he and two other athletes carried and dragged Marina van Deventer, 51, for kilometres through the snow until help arrived. It took about three hours to get her to a medical station.

The athletes were taking part in the gruelling 52km Rhodes Ultra Marathon when Van Deventer, a member of the Irene running club, stepped into a hole about 25km into the race and broke her ankle in two places.

It was on top of the southern Drakensberg near the Lesotho border. The highest point on the route is 2 670m above sea level.

Sub-zero temperatures

It was -6°C when the athletes started the race in Rhodes in the morning. Wynand Breytenbach, a club mate who ran with Van Deventer, tried to carry her after the fall, but later decided to rather go looking for help.

"I carried her for about 200m on my back before we fell down," Breytenbach said on Wednesday.

The incident happened about 4km from the nearest medical station. The road the athletes were running on was covered in snow and no vehicles could gain access.

Dr Anton de Munnik, an orthopaedic surgeon who runs for the Middelburg marathon club in Mpumalanga, and a fellow runner, Ross Lessing, later found Van Deventer where she was lying in the snow.

"I examined her ankle and established it was broken. There was only grass and thorn bushes and I used plastic bags and branches to set the ankle," said De Munnik.

Up to knees in snow

"We couldn't leave her there in the cold. Ross and I tried to carry her, but we kept sinking away up to our knees in snow."

De Munnik and Lessing lifted Van Deventer's arms while another athlete, Lauren Lincoln from East London, lifted the injured ankle with a space blanket.

All competitors had to carry a space blanket, water and a whistle. "We probably carried and dragged her for about 3km like that until a medical team arrived with a stretcher," said De Munnik.

The three athletes helped the medical team to get Van Deventer to the medical station. De Munnik, Lessing and Lincoln then withdrew from the race. A plate was inserted into Van Deventer's ankle at the Unitas Hospital in Centurion on Sunday.

She was released from hospital on Wednesday. "The other competitors were simply wonderful. Everyone who came by wanted to help - if it wasn't with a space blanket, it was with a cool drink or an energy drink, anything," told Van Deventer.

Camaraderie

"One guy even offered me his woollen cap. That is how we runners are. There is camaraderie. The three athletes who eventually helped me to get to the first aid station, didn't think of their own race. To them, I was a priority," said Van Deventer.

"At the Rhodes race, Eve Reubenheimer (one of the organisers) refers to the people who help with the organisation as the Rhodes angels. The people who helped me are Rhodes angels in my eyes."

"I cried a lot up there on the mountain, but I also laughed a lot," said Van Deventer.
- Beeld