Written by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come,” Victor Hugo is reputed to once have said.
Like many such ‘quotes’, this may not be a precise rendition of the French poet and novelist’s words, merely the most common paraphrase. Hugo’s observation...
A COLUMN BY LEN JOHNSON
The theory of running rounds is that the best eight, 12 or 15 runners make the final.
The cream rises to the top, so they say. But are there too many clots being pulled up with the cream.
Two thoughts occurred to me about the track events...
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...
Youth is wasted on the young, George Bernard Shaw once observed. He surely did not have Jakob Ingebrigtsen or Armand...
RUSSIA RUNNING OUT OF OPTIONS
A COLUMN BY LEN JOHNSON
Usain Bolt tells a London Diamond League media conference that his hamstring is ready to go for the Anniversary Games and Rio. The Court of Arbitration for Sport upholds an IAAF determination that 68 Russian athletes are not going to Rio.
Who...
WADA gets what it wants | A Column By Len Johnson
“Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets” went a song from the 1950s musical Damn Yankees and, judging by the outcome this week at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, WADA is the new Lola.
A CAS panel upheld an appeal by the...
runners tribe 07-06-2019forget the samba, it's the rhythm of the event that counts
Abderrahman Samba may be on the verge of re-writing the 400-meter hurdles record books, but the headlines – not so much.
The 23-year-old Qatari – he turns 24 in September, just a few days before his home world championships commence in Doha – ran 46.98 at the Paris Diamond League last year, becoming just the second man ever to break 47 seconds in the event. The only one faster is Kevin Young, who set the current world record of 46.78 in winning the Olympic gold medal in Barcelona in 1992.
The news this week of the collapse of the alleged drug case against Peter Bol was greeted by the athlete as a complete exoneration and by Sport Integrity Australia as “a decision not to progress an anti-doping rule violation for this sample.”
Brett Robinson, Jessica Hull and Stewart McSweyn made it a good week for Australian distance running this week, but it’s the sometimes under-rated Robinson who should be singled out.
It was hard not to notice Hull and McSweyn, who did their magic at the Melbourne Track Classic. The meeting may...
If you asked an Australian track and field fan to nominate the three best multi-day meetings held in this country, I guess there would be near-unanimous agreement on the top two – the Melbourne 1956 Olympic Games and Sydney 2000.
In line with that is the notion that each National Olympic Committee has the right to be represented at each Olympic Games. Thus, the universality clauses. As expressed in the World Athletics explainer to the qualification system for Paris: “An NOC with no male or female qualified athlete or relay team will be allowed to enter their best ranked male athlete or best ranked female athlete” . . . so far, so not so bad. But then, “in either the 100 metres, 800 metres or marathon.”
