What failure can teach us about success

The story of the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon becoming an Abbott World Marathon Major sounds like a story about success. Clark Gardner tells it rather differently.

For the CEO of FACES, the organisation behind the marathon, the journey was defined as much by failure as achievement. There were failed assessments, seemingly impossible international standards, a pandemic and, just when the goal appeared tantalisingly close, a race that had to be cancelled hours before the starting gun.

Speaking at The Insurance Conference Western Cape, Clark shared what those setbacks taught his team about partnerships, purpose, resilience and what happens when an organisation stops blaming circumstances and starts asking what it can do differently.

Start with a purpose bigger than the event

FACES didn’t initially set out to create a World Marathon Major. Its ambition was to use events to attract tourists to South Africa, creating economic activity and employment, particularly for people without advanced skills.

“We have millions of unemployed people in this country and tourism is one of the industries that can create opportunities across a very broad skills base,” Clark explained. “We wanted to build events that bring people here and add to the prestige of the city, the country and the continent.”

When FACES took over the Cape Town Marathon, it soon became apparent that achieving that purpose required a much bigger ambition. The marathon needed to become one of the world’s majors. The problem was that gaining that status meant satisfying 104 criteria, repeatedly, across areas ranging from elite athlete participation to route management and operational delivery. Many appeared designed around major First World cities.

The Cape Town team failed its first assessment. Then it failed again.

Keeping cars off the marathon route proved particularly difficult. Attracting enough of the world’s elite runners was expensive and highly competitive. Cape Town was asking athletes to choose it while established races around the world were chasing the same names. Then another candidate marathon succeeded.

“That was the moment we realised the problem was us,” Clark said. “We couldn’t keep blaming the criteria or our circumstances. Someone else had shown that it could be done. We had to look at ourselves and change.”

Turning failure into a plan

That change in mindset transformed the operation. The team identified the areas where it was falling short and developed detailed plans around each of them. The route was divided into sectors. Teams worked through the night to keep cars off the roads. International relationships were strengthened to attract the required elite field. Every objective was broken down into actions.

In 2024, the marathon achieved a 100% pass in its assessment, without conditions. Confidence soared. The following year was supposed to be a repeat performance before the long-awaited announcement. And then, as it so often does in Cape Town, the wind blew.

In the early hours before the 2025 marathon, severe winds were tearing through infrastructure at the race village. Fences were being blown across roads and teams could not safely set up hydration stations in parts of Woodstock and Salt River. The Joint Operations Committee made the call: the race had to be cancelled. For a team that had spent years building towards that morning, it was devastating.

When the worst happens, face it

There were discussions about postponing the start, but every alternative created new safety problems. Eventually, the organisers committed to the cancellation.

Then came another crucial decision. They decided to front the problem. The crisis communication plan called for all the bad news to be communicated immediately. The race was cancelled. There would be no refunds. The reasons were explained.

“We basically started at nought out of ten,” Clark recalled. “Everyone was angry with us, so we got the bad news out. From there, every positive thing we could do allowed us to start rebuilding.”

That approach proved significant. Partners rallied around the event, including support for entries into the following race. The marathon’s World Major ambitions survived and the organisers were given an opportunity to try again.

Perhaps most remarkably, international interest remained strong. The cancellation had exposed the organisation at its most vulnerable, but it had also demonstrated the strength of the partnerships surrounding it. As Clark noted, some of the marathon’s strongest international exposure came from the crisis itself.

Seven months to change the story

The team now had seven months to prepare for another attempt. It could simply have tried to recreate the cancelled event. Instead, it decided to make the next marathon bigger. Eliud Kipchoge, one of the greatest marathon runners in history, was announced for Cape Town. The event also took on the Age Group World Championships, bringing thousands of leading age-group runners from around the world.

The narrative began to change. People stopped talking about the cancelled marathon and started talking about Kipchoge coming to Cape Town. But the organisers were equally determined that international status should not turn the event into a copy of London, Berlin or New York. The goal was to be unmistakably African.

“We want people to arrive at the start and know they are in Africa,” Clark said. “There must be dancing, movement, music and that African spirit. We don’t want to imitate another major. We want to become the most desirable major by being ourselves.”

The marathon subsequently achieved the status the team had spent years pursuing, becoming an Abbott World Marathon Major.

Partnerships matter most when things go wrong

Looking back, Clark identified three elements behind the journey:

• choosing the right partners
• pursuing a higher purpose and
• learning how to deal with failure.

The first is particularly relevant to the insurance industry.

Major participation events rely on an ecosystem of sponsors, insurers, government, law enforcement, service providers, athletes, volunteers and communities. Those relationships cannot simply be transactional. The real test comes when something goes wrong.

For the Cape Town Marathon, the cancellation revealed which relationships were strong enough to survive disappointment and public criticism. And perhaps that is the most useful lesson from the story. Resilience isn’t about avoiding failure. Sometimes circumstances really do blow the fences over.

It is about having a purpose worth returning to, partners who stay when things become difficult and the willingness to examine your own failures rather than explain them away.

The Cape Town Marathon spent years chasing the status of a World Marathon Major. Having achieved it, Clark says the next ambition is even bigger: to become the most desirable World Marathon Major of them all. And to do it by being proudly, unmistakably African. 🇿🇦