Tom Evans has spoken in detail about the impact a terrifying mugging at knifepoint in South Africa has had on him.
The British ultrarunner is one of the favourites for UTMB next weekend but his whole build-up has been massively shaped by the shocking ordeal in Cape Town last November.
Evans has released a film called ‘No Stone Left Unturned’, which is embedded below, as he seeks a coveted UTMB success, but part one is dominated by what happened on that training run on Table Mountain.
‘Wheels massively came off’
Evans was out there for the Ultra Trail Cape Town as he looked to get his running back on track after a rollercoaster 2023.
There was the incredible high of his victory at Western States in what was then the fourth fastest time in history 14:40:22.
He then tried to emulate Kilian Jornet‘s 2011 feat of winning both Western States and UTMB in the same year, but as Evans admits in the film, “the wheels massively, massively came off” as he exited the race on a stretcher.
But things would then go from bad to life-threateningly worse as he tried to put the demons of UTMB behind him by racing again in Cape Town before the end of the year.
Terrifying ordeal
Explaining what unfolded, he said: “On one of my final proper runs, running in what is sort of deemed to be a fairly safe space out on the trails, two guys were walking towards me.
“I didn’t think anything of it. I took a half step off the trail so they could keep going. And as I took the half step off, I got rugby tackled, clothes-lined by these guys.
“You start shouting for help because there’s not an awful lot you can do. I went into fight mode straight away and sort of wrestled with them and I have no idea how long it lasted for. It felt like it was an age.
“The situation then massively changes when out of one of the bags, two knives come out and you’ve got a nine-inch sharp kitchen knife held on your neck and you can feel it pressing on your Adam’s apple.
“If if it goes a centimetre towards you, that’s, that’s you.
“Had I chosen to fight for a second longer, the end game could have quite literally been the end game.”
Utterly terrifying and no wonder Evans withdrew from the upcoming race, adding: “I wanted nothing to do with trail running. I wanted nothing to do with South Africa.
“I needed to get out of that environment as quickly as I could. I gave up everything so I could run and for that to be taken away by two people and you think you’re going to be killed is pretty tough.”
