Monaco’s Stade Louis II stadium has become the locus of superfast middle-distance performances over recent years. Before we start wondering whether there might be something miraculous in the Mediterranean air, there are some other obvious factors at play.
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...
By Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe – Len is RT’s lead columnist, a sub 2:20 marathoner, Author of ‘The Landy Era’ and a key writer for the IAAF, amongst other things…
The Australian half-marathon championships at Maroochydore one weekend, the Australian cross-country championships at Maleny this weekend (25 August): it’s...
I’ve only been to Bathurst twice in my lifetime, but each time I’ve approached it with a sense of excitement.
Not as great, no doubt, as the excitement experienced by Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth who became, in 1813, the first European settlers to cross the Blue Mountains, of which Bathurst...
Turn up the thermostat | A Column By Len Johnson
As a lawyer, Dick Pound has never been able to resist a pithy summation.
A few weeks ago, the current head of WADA was pontificating on Maria Sharapova. Critiquing the Russian tennis star’s defence of the failure by either her, or...
It’s the eve of the national cross-country championships as I write this. What else would I be thinking about other than cross-country?
One of the things I’m pondering is whether there is still a place for the cross-country specialist in the world of cross-country.
If you’ve run any cross-country at all,...
A column by Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
This definition is attributed to Albert Einstein. It has also become such an over-used cliché, according to the smarty-pants people at news and opinion website Salon, that further use...
James ‘Jim’ Bailey: 21 July, 1929-31 March, 2020
Jim Bailey, who died in America on 31 March, was a runner of undoubted talent. Yet, despite making an Olympic and a Commonwealth Games team and winning two national titles over 880 yards, Bailey is, and will continue to be, remembered for...
Barely a minute after the start of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games women’s 400 metres, Cathy Freeman was sitting in a crumpled heap on the track.
This was scarcely the pose you would expect of a gold medallist, but it was all Freeman had left after defying one of the...
By Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
A few days into the world championships in London a friend commented: “Four days, full stadium every session, great competition. So how come all I’m hearing about athletics is negative.”
He was right to wonder. Those few days had brought some wonderful competition, all of...
