Most pundits willing to stick out their necks and predict the winners of Sunday's 84th running of the Comrades Marathon from Pietermaritzburg to Durban would go along with defending "down run" men's champion, Leonid Shvetsov, and either of the Russian twin sisters, Elena or Olesya Nurgalieva, most likely Elena.
The America-based Shvetsov goes into the 89.17km race as overwhelming favourite to win the men's race with an impeccable record. The Russian set new course records in successive years (2007 and 2008) for both the Up and Down runs.
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There also seems to be no female in sight who can keep pace with the amazing Nurgalievas for the major spoils in the women's race, which carry purses of R220 000 and R110 000 for first and second respectively, the same as for the men.
But predicting the other eight places among the first ten will be a lottery with Russians such as Comrades 2005 Up run winner Tatyana Zhirkova (third in 2008), Marina Myshlyanova (fourth in 2008), Marina Bychkova (fifth in 2008) and South Africans Riana van Niekerk (sixth in 2008) and Farwa Mentoor (eighth in 2008) the ones to watch.
Shvetsov's Russian compatriots, Oleg Kharitonov, who won the 2006 Up run, and novice Mikhail Khobotov, who recorded a time of two hours 13 minutes in the 2007 Houston Marathon, are just two of a number of foreign athletes who will pace themselves as best they can should Shvetsov encounter any problems.
Kharitonov, who broke the World record for the 160km ultra-distance in 2002 in London, has seven years of experience over the Comrades course and an equal number of gold medals and while he can look back to 2006 when he was the Comrades Up run winner, he will certainly want to improve upon his sixth place in the 2007 down run.
Zimbabwean ultra-distance runner Marco Mambo is moving up from an impressive Two Oceans career, with three victories to his name, to test himself in the Comrades and has said it is his intention to "shadow" Shvetsov, a tactic that has never proved particularly successful in ultra-distance running.
Another Zimbabwean contender, Durban-based Steven Muzhingi, has finished third and seventh in the past two Comrades and is as capable of an upset as anyone.
Two other foreign runners who must be contenders are Poland's Jaroslaw Janicki, the 1999 Down run winner, and France's Yannick Djouadi, who won the World championship 100km race in 2006.
South African runners generally fare better on the down run than the up run and both 2003 and 2005 winners, Fusi Nhlapo and Sipho Ngomane respectively, are in top form, as is Harmans Mokgadi, the first South African runner to finish last year's Up run in sixth place.