Africa runner Russ Cook’s 16,000km feat called into question by tiny running association

Sore and sandblasted, runner Russ Cook has reached the northernmost point of Africa, almost a year after he set off from its southern tip on a quest to run the length of the continent.

But just hours after supporters cheered him on at a rocky outcrop beside the Mediterranean in northern Tunisia, there are now doubts about whether the 27-year-old can lay claim to being the first to ever run the full length of the continent.

The British charity fundraiser has run more than 16,000 kilometres across 16 countries in 352 days, surviving machete-wielding bandits, food poisoning and visa problems in a bid to be the first to traverse Africa.

“I’m a little bit tired,” Cook said — likely an understatement.

However, the seven-member World Runners Association has challenged Cook’s claim to be the first to achieve the feat.

The group has claimed that Danish athlete and one of its founding members, Jesper Olsen, was the first runner to do the length of Africa in 2010, when he ran 13,000km in a course that ran from Egypt to South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope during a world-traversing ultramarathon feat.

WRA president Phil Essam and Olsen both questioned Cook’s efforts, with Essam telling UK paper The Telegraph: “The WRA recognises Mr Jesper Kenn Olsen of Denmark as the first person to have run the full length of Africa.

“The World Runners Association therefore contests the claim made by British national Mr Russ Cook to be the first person to run the length of Africa.”

Cook, known on social media by his nickname, Hardest Geezer, has pointed out the fact that his journey was 3000km longer, as opposed to Olsen’s run which was calculated ‘as the crow flies’.

Cook set off on April 22, 2023 from Cape Agulhas in South Africa, the continent’s southernmost point. He hoped to complete the journey in 240 days, running the equivalent of more than a marathon every day.

He and his team had money, passports and equipment stolen in a gunpoint robbery in Angola. He was temporarily halted by back pain in Nigeria. And he was almost stopped in his tracks by the lack of a visa to enter Algeria, before diplomatic intervention from the Algerian embassy in Britain managed to secure the required documents.

Cook, who has spoken about how running helped him deal with his own mental health struggles, previously ran about 3000km from Istanbul to Worthing in 68 days.

His African run has raised more than 690,000 pounds ($A1.3 million) for the Running Charity, which works with homeless young people, and Sandblast, a charity that helps displaced people from Western Sahara.

“It’s quite hard to put into words, 352 days on the road, long time without seeing family, my girlfriend,” Cook told Sky News as he started running Sunday, accompanied by supporters who’d come from far and wide to run the final stretch with him.

“My body is in a lot of pain. But one more day, I’m not about to complain.”