A Column By Len Johnson

Len Johnson wrote for The Melbourne Age as an athletics writer for over 20 years, covering five Olympics, 10 world championships and five Commonwealth Games.

He has been the long-time lead columnist on RT and is one of the world’s most respected athletic writers.

He is also a former national class distance runner (2.19.32 marathon) and trained with Chris Wardlaw and Robert de Castella among other running legends. He is the author of The Landy Era.

Round about the time the coronavirus pandemic went truly global, and was seen to be ‘a thing’ which might adversely impact the Tokyo Olympic Games, a Japanese government minister lamented that the Games were afflicted with a 40-year-curse. “It’s a problem that’s happened every 40 years – it’s the cursed...
Eleanor Patterson took the silver medal in the high jump and Ash Moloney the bronze in the heptathlon. Must have been mixed feelings for Patterson – her first time over two metres, a medal, but pipped at the last by Yaroslava Mahuchik’s first-time clearance at 2.02.
Readers of this column will know that I have never met a 10,000-metre race I did not like. “What never,” you ask. “No; never,” I re-affirm stoutly. “What never,” you repeat even more disbelievingly. “Well, hardly ever,” I reply, grudgingly giving an inch. To experience, exceptional performance in running, choose the...
But with athletics in Victoria, my home state, emerging from Covid lockdown this weekend (14-15 November) with a ‘community’ cross-country, now is as good a time as ever to dive back into Australia’s history at the world cross-country championships.
Day one of a world championships always asks many questions. Who’s up for it? Who’s not? How are the assumptions we brought into the meeting standing up to the test of the day’s results?
Last weekend (Sunday, 8 March), 86,174 spectators at the Melbourne Cricket Ground watched Australia win the final of the women’s cricket T20 World Cup. It was reported as the highest attendance ever for a women’s sporting event in Australia. Good on them. Got to be happy about that. If you’re...
Len Johnson Reporting from the World Champs, London – Runner’s Tribe Another night in the London Olympic Stadium thin on finals turned out to be thick on drama as Conselsus Kiruto maintained Kenyan honour in one of the events where traditional hegemony was under challenge only to lose another in which...
Jessica Hull was pretty excited about smashing the Australian 1500 metres record at the Golden Gala Diamond League meeting in Florence last week. So she should be, too. Hull’s performance continued the rich vein of form she has been in to date in 2023. A bronze medal in the mixed...
Something to be said for insomnia There’s not much to be said for insomnia. Nothing to be said for it, in fact, for those who suffer from the full-blown sleeping disorder. There’s little more to be said for the occasional sleepless night either, except that cable television offers options that we...
                   

Brilliantly

SAFE!

2022