Bloukrans Bridge crossing was monkey business for SA daredevil Thomas van Tonder

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Traversing the Bloukrans Bridge on 600 monkey bars is just the latest physical challenge that South African obstacle course racing star Thomas van Tonder has taken on. He says he…

Traversing the Bloukrans Bridge on 600 monkey bars is just the latest physical challenge that South African obstacle course racing star Thomas van Tonder has taken on. He says he does all these physical challenges to prove to his three children that nothing is impossible.

South Africa’s Thomas van Tonder has always been a sporty and active human being, participating in different activities. But by his own words, he was never particularly good at any individual sport, even though he has a black belt in kickboxing and was an avid cyclist before switching his focus to the obstacle course racing (OCR) discipline.

“Why OCR? The biggest reason is that I’m really, really good at it. I wasn’t really good at anything else. I was relatively good at a bunch of things. But I have this natural ability to be really good at taking on obstacles,” Van Tonder told Daily Maverick.

“If we are just running, people will beat me. If we just do power things, people will beat me. But if you combine these into one single discipline, I’m really good at it,” he said.

OCR combines a number of disciplines, similar to the decathlon. However, unlike its Olympic Games counterpart, it is mostly done on rugged terrain and not the structured infrastructure that hosts the decathlon.

For example, Van Tonder recently completed a mind-boggling individual challenge. The 34-year-old daredevil crossed more than 600 monkey bars suspended beneath the arch of the Bloukrans Bridge in the Western Cape. It is Africa’s highest bridge, at 216m above the Bloukrans River gorge.

Rather than crossing a straight run of horizontal bars, the Hartbeespoort-raised OCR star followed the natural arch of the bridge. This meant he had to take on the bridge’s uphill arch, cross its flat crown and then descend the far side.

A straight line across the top of the bridge was a possibility and would have led to a much easier crossing. But Van Tonder chose the more difficult option to challenge his mental and physical capabilities.

“The whole…

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