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.

Rio 2016, have you met Melbourne 1956? A Column By Len Johnson “Your projects have been changed several times. Your sites, even including the main stadium, have been changed several times . . . you are contemplating changing the rowing to a site I have never heard of. “There seems to...
The Dubai marathon has been going 20 years now. It’s about time I made up my mind about it. For most of those years, Dubai has produced outstanding times. The 2019 edition certainly did – Ruth Chepngetich of Kenya’s 2:17:08 was the third-fastest marathon ever by a woman. In second...
A (slightly) revisionist view of the London marathon. Kelvin Kiptum ran home in splendid isolation to win the London marathon, covering the second half of the race in 59:45 to miss Eliud Kipchoge’s world record by just 16 seconds. Unleash your full potential with Tarkine Goshawk shoes, where cutting-edge technology...
There’s a lot of noise about shoes right now, a rumble that only intensified when Tigst Assefa ran that other-worldly women’s marathon world record 2:11:53 in Berlin. In case you missed it, Assefa was shod in the very latest adidas super-shoe.
Can it really be just a few months (spoiler: yes, it can) since many of us were aghast at World Athletics’ decision to trim formats to fit Diamond League meetings into a 90-minute television window. In those pre-coronavirus days, the decision to defenestrate some beloved events – the 5000 metres,...
About the only English people feeling less than devastated about England’s World Cup exit are the people staging England’s World Cup this weekend (14-15 July). How’s that, you ask. Well, England lost in football’s World Cup semi-finals to Croatia and won’t be further involved, the third/fourth place playoff aside. Instead...
A few years ago, a friend invited me to address a primary school book club about The Landy Era. The audience was year six students – so, 12 years old for the most part – and their parents. I’d noticed some sport publications on the library display shelf, including one...
What a week. First cricket, and a ball-tampering scandal which has now resulted in the Australian captain, vice-captain and a hapless junior player facing suspensions and the coach resigning. Second, amidst all the cricket turmoil, came the raising by a senior government minister of the prospect – quickly shut down,...
I love the world cross-country championships. At a personal level, however, I can take cross-country or leave it.
When Abbey Caldwell became the second-fastest Australian woman over 800 metres in Sydney on 11 March, she renewed an age-old debate among those of who follow the middle distances. To wit: is it better to be coming down to the 800 from the 1500 metres end of the spectrum, or moving up from the 400 metres end.