Why Zatopek remains relevant: A Column By Len Johnson
Ron Clarke hailed Emil Zatopek as the greatest distance runner who ever lived, not only for his performances, but also for his personality.
Four Olympic gold medals – the 10,000 metres in London in 1948 and the unprecedented, and unequalled, distance treble...
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...
A Column By Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
It is entirely fitting that Steve Moneghetti’s induction into the Athletics Australia Hall of Fame should have been announced the week of the world cross-country championships.
Despite his great achievements at the marathon and on the track, it was the world cross-country which...
It’s early in an Olympic year. An unknown young man breaks through at 800, running 1:45.77. A scarcely better-known young woman breaks the national record in the 100 metres, speeding down the straightaway in 11.10 seconds.
David McNeill’s athletics career could have been over almost before it began. On Tuesday night in Perth, he may have run his way into a third Olympic team.
It was in 2005 that McNeill, along with Liam Adams and Toby Rayner, was a controversial non-selection for the junior team to...
Japan’s Fukuoka marathon used to be the best non-championship marathon of the year.You knew when it would be run: the first Sunday in December each year. You knew who would be running: the best six international runners organisers could get on a ‘start at the top and keep going until six men have said ‘yes’’ basis; the best six Japanese runners (few of whom ever said ‘no’ to Japan’s most prestigious race); anyone else around the world who had bettered the 2:27 qualifying time and was willing to pay their own way.The Olympics were the only global championships back then, so most years Fukuoka might bring together the European and Commonwealth champions, the winners of traditional races like Boston and the English AAA championship and others burning with ambition. Before there was a world championships, the Fukuoka marathon was the next-best thing.
A column by Len Johnson
An article this week on Track & Field News’s webpage piqued my interest.
“Tokyo 2020 organisers discuss 6am start for marathon” ran the headline for a Kyodo News story listed under Today’s News Headlines. A second soon appeared, this one from the Asahi Shimbun, the race-long...
The Games have begun – at last.
All us track and field fans know that the Olympic don’t really begin until athletics starts next Friday, but sports are being contested and medals being won (including some by Australians. Hooray!).
Rio pulled off an opening ceremony which, while avoiding the financial extravagances...
When Krishna Stanton burst onto the international scene in early-1987, it seemed she could be anything. Fourth in the 3000 metres at the world indoor championships, eighth in a world cross-country run over what was reported as the “freezing muddy wastes of Sluzewiac Racecourse,” the world seemed at her...
A column by Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe
Out of Africa, always something new, wrote Pliny the Elder back in the first century A.D.
Pliny was referencing a quote from the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, but if you paraphrase slightly to “out of Africa, always something in the news,” then you’ve just...
