A column by Len Johnson reporting from the Gold Coast
Championship marathons seem to attract more than their fair share of brutal weather.
Put on any championship, pick any day for the marathons and it’s a better than even-money bet that the day will dawn warm and sunny. Indeed, that it...
It’s safe to say the combined value of the shoes worn by the women’s lead pack in New York last weekend – even adjusted for inflation – would have been many times that of Pizzolato’s shoes (just as his would have been way above those worn by Emil Zatopek and Jim Peters).
Remember when Australia ruled the world at men’s steeple? No: well, I don’t either. In fact, I would never have known of this brief domination had it not been for the coronavirus pandemic.
Until very recently, I had thought that the history of the men’s steeple was pretty much the...
How good is being an athletics selector?
Normally, you would have to say: “Very good indeed.” The inclusive policy adopted by Athletics Australia for the past decade and more, makes selection pretty much a tick-and-flick process. Win the national? Tick. Achieve the qualifying standard? Tick. Get offered a place via...
If you know a bit about the high jump, you might think that the event changed dramatically when a young American named Richard (‘Dick’) Fosbury won a shock gold medal at the Mexico City 1968 Olympic Games with a revolutionary technique of going over the bar backwards. Fast run-up, 180-degree turn and flop over on your back.
In 1937, MGM released A Day at the Races, the seventh movie starring The Marx Brothers.
Like most of the previous six, the film attracted favourable reviews and made good box office. One of those reviews was penned by none other than Graham Greene, the English author and journalist regarded...
So, with support from World Athletics and the Victorian government, the Melbourne Track Classic has been picked up, dusted off and will be presented at Lakeside Stadium on 23 February as the Maurie Plant Meet (MPM), a World Athletics Continental Gold meeting.
As we travelled to Falls Creek for the forty-somethingth year in a row I had one of those existential-type moments. Had the journey up to Victoria’s Bogong High Plains become better than the destination.
A column by Len Johnson
The IAAF Council is considering whether to adopt its new rankings system as the method for qualification for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at its meeting this weekend (9-10 March).
At the moment the proposal is on the back-burner. The wisest decision the learned men and...
The year 2020 has been described as “a year like no other” so many times now that it is easy to forget that sometimes it’s true.
Rankings, for example, which are such an anticipated and enjoyable of our sports’ end-of-year ponderings and annual awards in general, are going to be a far more difficult exercise in a year in which all competition took place within the constraints imposed by a global pandemic.
