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.

It’s been quite the year for records. World records, area records, national records going down like ninepins. It’s possible that without much ‘normal’ athletics happening, record-breaking creates even bigger headlines. Setting up a night of records, as happened when Joshua Cheptegei and Letesenbet Gidey broke the men’s 10,000 and women’s...
A column by Len Johnson The world cross-country is coming to Australia, just the second time in its history the championships will have been contested in this part of the world. To say that I am happy about that would be a gross understatement. It was announced this week that the...
A column by Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe  Last weekend, 5-7 May, was one of those times when, to dip our lids to Roy Slaven and H.G.Nelson, “too much sport was barely enough.” To recap, we had off-field shenanigans with the John Coates v Danni Roche election for the Australian Olympic...
In a famous case before the Australian High Court Justice Lionel Murphy, in arguing that the conviction of an indigenous activist should be overturned, wrote: “Mr Neal is entitled to be an agitator.”
Grand week of 1500 | A Column By Len Johnson Olympic 1500 metres qualifiers for Jenny Blundell, Ryan Gregson and Luke Mathews – it hardly needs saying that it has been a great week for Australian middle-distance running. In fact, taking into consideration Mathews’s earlier qualifying performance at 800 metres, Melissa...
If someone said they’d had a ‘b’ of a week, you would normally think it hadn’t been too good. The Australian and Indian men’s cricket teams, for example. In assigning that descriptor to the past seven days (5-11 July), however, I’ve got other things in mind. OK, maybe Hagos Gebrhiwet,...
O tempora, o mores - oh what times, oh what customs - declaimed the Roman orator Cicero to his fellow senators in 63 BC, in a speech attacking a political rival. Or, to put it (very) loosely, things couldn’t get much stranger than this. Oh yes they can. To cite...
Len Johnson Reporting from the World Champs, London – Runner’s Tribe Eight years ago the world seemed to be at Dani Stevens (then Dani Samuels) feet. On a rainy night in Berlin, she handled the difficult conditions far better than her more experienced rivals to become, at 21, the youngest winner...
A column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe The most unexpected of many coincidences and surprises surrounding the launch of The Landy Era back in 2009 was the appearance of Billy Mills. My book had already enjoyed the benefit of several twists of good fate, chiefly in being ready for launch at the...
By Len Johnson reporting from the Gold Coast You will find Nick Hough and Alex Hulley side by side in the Australian Commonwealth Games Media Guide, but hands up anyone who expected to find them, if not exactly next to each other, one after the other on the medals’ podium. Stranger...