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,...
Traveling in a fried-out Kombi
On a hippie trail, head full of zombie
- Down Under, Men at Work, 1981
What do you do when you're trekking around and in need of transport?
Well, if it’s the 1970s and you are Australians in Europe, you get yourself a Kombi van. Many young Aussies...
I was kicked out of Falls Creek.
I’m not complaining. I put my hand up: it was a fair call. I’ll certainly learn from the experience.
After more than 40 years of annual Christmas-New Year trips to Falls Creek you can be forgiven for thinking you’ve seen it all. But being...
Some blokes take the conventional path to number one in Track & Field News’s prestigious annual rankings.
For over 70 years now the US magazine self-styled, and rightly known as, The Bible of the Sport has assessed athletes against three criteria – honours won; win-loss record; and, sequence of marks...
Zatopek week 2019 was highlighted by two significant events. First was the death of Peter Snell just a few days before the race; second, the win in national record time of Stewart McSweyn in the fifty-ninth running of the men’s 10,000 metres.
It would be drawing too long a bow...
Winston Churchill once famously characterised Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” It hasn’t become any simpler a riddle, any less shrouded in mystery, nor less of an enigma in the time since.
I’m not thinking as broadly as Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, but more specifically...
One of the endearingly frustrating things about athletics is its tendency for misplaced anxieties.
One person’s imminent disaster is another’s ho-hum moment, I know, but we all too easily get into a tizz about things that aren’t as bad as we think whilst overlooking crises about to envelop us.
Witness, say,...
Written by Len Johnson
Graham Crouch, an Olympic finalist, an Australian record holder, a participant in two of the greatest middle-distance races ever, passed away on 28 November after a battle with a particularly aggressive form of cancer.
Crouch was rarely referred to by his full name. Most commonly he was...
The World Athletics Athlete of the Year is determined by a vote of administrators, a (loosely defined) athletics ‘family’ and fans (that is, members of the general public).
The administrators – aka World Athletics Council members – count for 50 percent; the family – including media, coaches, agents and meeting...
But, suddenly, a new contender has emerged.
A classic Seinfeld punchline which, because it is from an episode which references the New York marathon, is relevant here.
In the episode in question – The Apartment – the scene is a marathon-day party where Jerry and George are debating which of them...
