If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen is one of those cliches which gets trotted out from time to time. Often by someone concerned they might just be giving off a hint of getting uncomfortably warm themselves. Elevate your running game with Tarkine Trail Devil,...
Continuing my meandering paper chase through our world cross-country history, we come to the 1977 and 1979 championships in Dusseldorf and Limerick, respectively. The former saw Australia continue to move up with the debut of three 20-year-olds who would be the nucleus of future teams.
But – whatever happened to the women?
Followers of cross-country are used to seeing young runners make significant debuts. Did someone say Kenenisa Bekele? Or Zola Budd who, like Bekele, was a senior world champion before her 20 th birthday. Bekele, indeed, not only won the short-lived short race in 2001, but did the double a year later, all still three months before turning 20.
Hassan closes with deadly speed
After Herb Elliott had destroyed Ron Delany and the rest of the field to smash the world mile record in Dublin in 1958, a priest asked Delany how would you beat the great Australian.
“I don’t know, father,” replied Delany. “Maybe tie his legs together.”
Sifan Hassan...
For Australians, though, it was only the mile that mattered. Any year a Norwegian athlete is not attempting a world record – which is most years – the Dream Mile is the closing event of the Bislett Games. And this year, Australia’s Stewart McSweyn won it.
I can’t remember whether Ingrid Kristiansen called me, or I called her.
But there was a phone call in March, 1988, the week before the women’s world 15km road race championship in Adelaide. Kristiansen was training at Falls Creek in preparation for a tilt at two world titles within six...
Just as you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows; Nina Kennedy didn’t need a magazine to tell her she was the number one female pole vaulter in the world last year.
Women didn’t get to make distance running history. Paternalistic notions about the impact of physical stress on women which, in truth, were too often misogyny disguised as medical science, saw to that.
Pheidippedes hijacked the whole marathon myth thing with his “rejoice, we have won,” message to Athens, collapse and...
A column by Len Johnson
When John Walker was asked about his ‘modest’ winning time in the Montreal 1976 Olympic Games final, he reputedly responded that world records are made to be broken, gold medals last forever.
It’s true, too. A year earlier Walker had become the first man to break...
A column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
Two things surprised me at my first Commonwealth Games as a journalist in Auckland in 1990.
The first, Andrew Lloyd’s victory in an amazing 5000 metres race, still surprises me to this day. I don’t know if ‘Lloydie’ still sometimes wonders if it...
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...
