Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe
Mo Farah won the final track race of his career in the same manner as many of his famous championships victories – looking utterly dominant while winning by centimetres.
This was not just any old race. It was the 5000 metres at Zurich’s Weltklasse meeting, auspicious enough...
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.
In October, 2018, Jack Rayner hit a sweet spot.
Running in the inaugural Commonwealth half-marathon championships (has there been another ne: I’m not sure), Rayner went boldly with the pace set by a pack of Ugandan and Kenyan runners all bringing much more impressive personal bests to the starting line than his modest 63:19.
By Len Johnson (reporting from Doha) - Runner's Tribe
For eight of her nine throws in Doha, Kelsey-Lee Barber was struggling. All the throwers were. No-one was finding it easy to produce good throws in the heavy atmosphere inside Khalifa International Stadium.
“Trust the feel, trust the rhythm,” coach and husband...
When Stewart McSweyn and Catriona Bisset checked in at the Australian championships, they picked up bibs bearing their names. They might just as well have borne targets.
Each athlete faced dangerous rivals whose race plan would largely consist of hanging on as long as possible, then try to get past...
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...
Chronicler of our sport | A Column By Len Johnson
I never formally met Mike Agostini, who died in Sydney on Thursday (12 May), but I consider myself in his debt.
The debt is both personal and general. Personal, because my first published piece of journalism was a first-hand account of...
Sugar-coating the pill. Bait and switch. Little white lies.
Life is full of euphemisms for the art of getting us to buy – most often, it is ‘buy’ – a less tasty commodity by implying we are actually being offered something far more palatable.
History is a dry subject; statistics even...
Universality. In the long and endless deliberations about the new qualification system for Olympic Games and world championships, who knew about the universality clause.
A column by Len Johnson
Asked to name Kenya’s first Olympic medallist, most track and field fans would probably nominate Kip Keino. Good choice, too: Keino was one of Ron Clarke’s great rivals in the 1960s, the pair improving the world 5000 metres record five times (4-1 in Clarke’s favour)between...
