Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
Have we got a dog in the fight is the basic question self-interest asks itself whenever a dispute flares.
In other words, have we got an interest beyond the fact that many humans are drawn towards conflict – provided they are a safe non-participant. As many...
When Krishna Stanton burst onto the international scene in early-1987, it seemed she could be anything. Fourth in the 3000 metres at the world indoor championships, eighth in a world cross-country run over what was reported as the “freezing muddy wastes of Sluzewiac Racecourse,” the world seemed at her...
On 4 January, 1981, I ran to the summit of Mt Bogong.
Having got to the top once, it took almost 38 years to the day to do it again, this time walking, on 30 December, 2018. Back to Mt Bogong, certainly; but certainly not back-to-back Mt Bogongs.
The drive from...
Right now – 27 November, as this is written – it is exactly 64 years past the mid-point of the athletics’ program at the Melbourne 1956 Olympic Games.
Sixty-four is not an anniversary we usually celebrate, I’ll grant you, but consider two points of mitigation in that regard. Firstly, the four-year Olympic cycle does not lend itself to the five-year rhythm of most anniversary celebrations: the two waves only coincide once every 20 years, which is way too long between drinks.
A column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
Medals are not easy to get at world championships. Australia had to wait till the ninth day of the world championships to get an athlete to the medal ceremony, but when one medal finally arrived, like London’s famous red buses, another was...
It’s getting to the end of the year, that time when you start to reflect on your favourite things of the previous 12 months.
Of course, we’ve only had just short of 11 months of 2019, which is one of the perils of end-of-the-year reflection. One of my perennially favourite...
About the only English people feeling less than devastated about England’s World Cup exit are the people staging England’s World Cup this weekend (14-15 July).
How’s that, you ask. Well, England lost in football’s World Cup semi-finals to Croatia and won’t be further involved, the third/fourth place playoff aside. Instead...
When this column drew the curtain on 2021 with a look at the annual Track & Field News rankings, I commented it had been a notably strong year for Australian athletes. I hadn’t realised how strong until former Athletics Australia president Terry Dwyer drew my attention to the magazine’s analysis of the rankings.
As we ‘progress’ ever further into this strange time of lockdown, increasingly the past is becoming our new future.
Denied competition to get enthusiastic about we dig ever deeper into nostalgia. And the good thing about nostalgia is that – despite its not being as good as it used to...
Let’s keep this on the record, shall we.
Having considered recently how much credibility should be given to some of the world records set this year (Please Buy This Record, RT 18 October), let’s look this time at the quantity of records set by Australian duo Jessica Hull and Stewart McSweyn.
Hull took down Benita Willis’s national record for 5000 metres when she ran 14:43.80 in Monaco and then Linden Hall’s national mark for 1500 with a 4:00.42 in Berlin. Finally, she ran 8:36.03 for 3000 in Doha to slice a couple of seconds off Willis’s former 3000 record. Earlier in the year, Hull ran 4:04.14 in Boston to take the indoor 1500 record from Melissa Duncan.
