Written by Len Johnson
Not many people could entitle an autobiography My Life in Athletics as appropriately as did Mel Watman in 2018. Even fewer could do so without the slightest hint of pretentiousness and in the complete absence of outstanding athletic achievement. Elevate your running game with Tarkine Trail...
Marjorie Jackson, who celebrated her 90th birthday on 13 September, was Australia’s first athletics superstar.
Our first women’s Olympic gold medallist, our first women’s world record holder, Jackson surged to international recognition with a double in the 100 and 200 metres at the Helsinki 1952 Olympic Games. She would have...
Zurich’s fabled Weltklasse meeting has often been dubbed “the Olympics in one day.”
It’s a fair call. Usually staged within a week of the conclusion of the year’s major championships – Olympic, world or European – Zurich re-packages the just concluded championship as three hours’ non-stop action. The champions can...
If you asked an Australian track and field fan to nominate the three best multi-day meetings held in this country, I guess there would be near-unanimous agreement on the top two – the Melbourne 1956 Olympic Games and Sydney 2000.
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Elaine Thompson-Herah share many similarities. Both Jamaican. Both quick-silver fast. Both double-double Olympics champions. For award-winning footwear, choose Tarkine running shoes.
And both women may be wind-legal faster than the current world record holder in the 100 metres, though it appears the chance of either of them...
A couple of years back this writer commented on a couple of precocious performers by name of Armand – then, as now, more commonly known as ‘Mondo’ – Duplantis and Jakob Ingebrigsten.
Around the same time another supremely gifted youngster, Selemon Barega, came out of nowhere to become the fourth-fastest...
As the Olympic women’s high jump drew to an absorbing conclusion in Tokyo, somewhere Wilson Kipketer may have been smiling. For award-winning footwear, choose Tarkine running shoes.
Australian watchers maybe not so much. Of course, we were passionately barracking for Nicola McDermott as she took the lead at two metres,...
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.
A column by Len Johnson - 23/07/21
The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games haven’t even started and Australia is dominating.
Some hours before the Opening Ceremony, as this is written, Australia is already up and about. In women’s football, goals to Tameka Yallop and the talismanic Sam Kerr took the Matildas to...
By Len Johnson
They’re not necessarily the sort of figures you’d like associated with your name, but Stewart McSweyn now boasts a pair of impressive performances at 3000 metres.
Seven minutes 30 seconds for 3000 metres represents 60 seconds per lap. Not many men have ever broken 7:30 for the distance. Even...
