It has been a bone of contention for the competitive twins since they were old enough to walk and talk.
And now Sam is teasing Beno that he will cross the finish line in tomorrow’s Emerson’s Dunedin half-marathon ahead of his brother — by about the same amount of time.
Beno laughed it off, saying it was common banter between the two.
"He plays the older brother card a lot."
The 20-year-old University of Otago students used to train together, but in the past year conflicting study schedules and part-time jobs have made that harder to do.
Sam is studying biomedical science, and Beno is studying commerce and management, so they have been training separately for the marathon.
Sam conceded it was possible Beno would beat him, purely because he had not been able to do as much training as he would have liked lately.
"But you never know."
When it comes to running, the twins are even closer than they look.
They regularly compete in cross-country events, and earlier this year, Sam won the TK Cowan Handicap Cross Country with Beno coming in just a few seconds behind in second place.
"Over the years, it’s very much been one of us wins one year, the other one wins the next year," Beno said.
"It’s been very even, so it’s always a good battle.
"We’re not ultra-competitive like some twins or siblings are, but we certainly definitely want to beat one another."
Sam said they would run together tomorrow for as long as they could keep up with each other, but neither would wait for the other if one of them slowed down.
"I’ll run with him as long as I can. And hopefully I can keep up, because there’s always a bit of rivalry there between us."
However, Beno said their competitive rivalry only lasted until someone else started taking the mickey out of one of them.
"Then we stick up for each other. Sam and I are very close.
"We’ve been very lucky over the years to have each other to lean on and discuss any problems — he’s basically my closest mate."
While the twins thought it would be fun to dress up for the marathon as the Topp Twins, the Olsens, or even B1 and B2 (from Bananas in Pyjamas), they decided against it because it was their first marathon, and they wanted to finish it in the fastest time they could.
"Wearing a banana suit will slow us down," Sam said.
Instead, they would run in their Hill City-University Athletics Club gear.
It would make it even harder for people to tell them apart.
Sam said it could be a great strategy for the marathon.
"We could use it to play mental mind games with the other runners.
"If someone passes one of us, and then they come up behind the other one of us, they’ll be thinking, ‘didn’t I just pass you? What’s going on here? Am I hallucinating? Maybe I need to stop and drink more water or something’."
Sounds like they could be double trouble.
