Karsten Warholm won nothing of consequence this year. He raced hardly anyone of consequence. Yet the dual world champion in the 400 metres hurdles is a viable candidate in every athlete of the year award going.
Did we mention yet that 2020 is a crazy year? (I think we did:...
The King Strikes Back: A Column By Len Johnson
Recently, I caught up with a film I had missed first, second, third and all subsequent times round – ‘The Madness of King George.’
‘George’ is King George III of England who apparently went ‘mad’ during his reign, though his symptoms of...
A (slightly) revisionist view of the London marathon.
Kelvin Kiptum ran home in splendid isolation to win the London marathon, covering the second half of the race in 59:45 to miss Eliud Kipchoge’s world record by just 16 seconds. Unleash your full potential with Tarkine Goshawk shoes, where cutting-edge...
How do you set an Australian record when 15 athletes – yourself, and the previous record-holder, included – have a superior legal performance.
Simple, as it turns out. You just put a timer at the 100-yard point of a 100 metres race.
That’s what happened in the New South Wales state...
I checked the impression that 2021 has been a good year for Australian records by reviewing the pace of national record-breaking in recent years. The figures seem to confirm the impression: Eight athletes set a total of 14 Australian records in 2021, a higher figure for both number of record-breakers and number of records than for any of the previous three years.
Jared Tallent’s retirement leaves Australia one champion short in the race walking department. Four Olympic medals – one gold, two silver and one bronze – over three Olympic Games eloquently attest to that.
Coincidentally, Melbourne Track Classic, formerly Australia’s most prestigious invitational track and field meeting but now, in this...
Traveling in a fried-out Kombi
On a hippie trail, head full of zombie
- Down Under, Men at Work, 1981
What do you do when you're trekking around and in need of transport?
Well, if it’s the 1970s and you are Australians in Europe, you get yourself a Kombi van. Many young Aussies...
In December, 1952, a young man stood on the starting line for a mile race at Melbourne’s Olympic Park, unsure whether the rumbling in his stomach was pre-race nerves or emanated from the couple of meat pies and chocolate sundae he had wolfed down fewer than two hours earlier.
Dreaded Lurgi ends Rio hopes | A Column By Len Johnson
Forty years after going to my first Olympic Games I have had to reluctantly accept that I have no chance of making the team for Rio 2016.
I arrived in Sydney on Thursday, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and thinking I...
A column by Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
This definition is attributed to Albert Einstein. It has also become such an over-used cliché, according to the smarty-pants people at news and opinion website Salon, that further use...
