Almost 68 years ago, an athlete was plucked from obscurity to represent Australia in the marathon at the Helsinki 1952 Olympic Games.
Amazing. More amazing still was the fact that the athlete in question, Claude Smeal, was serving with the Australian armed forces in the Korean war. A national-class marathoner,...
Inevitable as it was, the decision by World Athletics to postpone the world indoor championships by 12 months from March, 2020 to March, 2021, has created a logistical problem for the world cross-country championships in Bathurst in 2021.
The outbreak of coronavirus in Wuhan, and its potential spread, was an...
At Graham Crouch’s memorial some weeks ago, thoughts naturally turned to some of ‘Gruffy’s’ greatest runs.
The memorial was conducted at Hagenauer Reserve, home to Box Hill Athletic Club. As a committed Box Hill member, Crouch ran some of his best races at the track, including a 3:56.7 mile there...
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...
World cross-country 1981-85: amid extraordinary scenes in Madrid, Robert de Castella takes Australia into the individual top-10.
A year out from Bathurst 2021, Len Johnson continues his look at Australia in the world cross-country championships.
The men’s race at the 1981 world cross-country championships in Madrid finished amid extraordinary scenes as...
That was pretty quick, wasn’t it? One minute the Olympic Games are full steam ahead, the next they’re punted off into 2021, maybe 2020, sometime in the future anyway.
Quick – and painless, we’re assured. Just as the doctor assures Pink, in Pink Floyd’s The Wall, as he is about...
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...
Period of Adjustment, the debut feature film for director George Roy Hill, was based on the Tennessee Williams stage play of the same name about two married couples experiencing relationship problems.
A period of adjustment is what is faced by athletics – all sport, in fact – in adapting to...
The longer the Covid-19 pandemic takes to work its way around the world, the further we retreat into the confines of our own homes.
Once the earth was our limit (unless you’ve stumped up half a million for a voyage to Mars via Elon Musk). Now, life is restricted to...
Given the painfully slow historic process of admitting that women were capable of running long distances, would it surprise you to learn that women led the adoption of annual Australian cross-country championships.
Yes, it would, I’m presuming you replied. It certainly came as a shock to me. Yet, in 1960,...
