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.

I love the world cross-country championships. At a personal level, however, I can take cross-country or leave it.
Len Johnson Reporting from the World Champs, London – Runner’s Tribe Luke Mathews could scarcely have had a worse Rio Olympic experience last year than if he had decided to go out partying with the US swimmers. Selected for the 800 metres after he had run David Rudisha close in Melbourne and...
Who do you reckon would be Australia’s best athlete? The answer, I suspect, would depend on how you look at it. Some would say it has to be an Olympic or world champion, a world record breaker, or perhaps both. Others might look at longevity, consistent excellence over a period of years. Then there’s the impact of a single performance: Ralph Doubell’s world record-equalling win in the 800 metres in Mexico City, Herb Elliott’s smashing world record victory in the 1500 in Rome, Cathy Freeman withstanding the crushing build-up of pressure to win the 400 in Sydney.
Len Johnson Reporting from the World Champs, London – Runner’s Tribe Note to future event organisers: when you’ve got a program which is fairly light on finals, make sure you finish off with a real barnburner. London 2017 did just that on Monday. The night had just four finals, but it finished...
Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces, since he looks to the future and to the past. Janus presided over the beginning and ending of...
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,...
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...
  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Tarkine (takayna) (@tarkinerunning) Fair stands the wind - or does it? | A column by Len Johnson On Monday, 18 January 1932, sprinter Jim Carlton rocketed around the curved grass track on the Sydney Cricket Ground to win the Australian championships 220 yards...
There’s different ways you can look at Eliud Kipchoge’s latest world record, 2:01:09 in Berlin. But any way you look at it – it’s fast.
At the World Indoor Tour meeting in Birmingham, Catriona Bisset chased home Keely Hodgkinson in the 800 metres, running 1:59.46. That sliced a massive 2.39 seconds off the previous Australian record which was set by Tamsyn Manou in the heats at the world indoor championships in Valencia. Manou went on to win the gold medal in the final.
                     

Brilliantly

SAFE!

2022