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.

Not much interrupts the runner’s lifestyle at Falls Creek. It is pretty much run, rest, eat, repeat from day one of stay to departure. Nirvana for aspiring distance champions – and aren’t or weren’t we all, aspiring that is – boring as bat s**t for anyone else. New Year’s Eve...
Last weekend (Sunday, 8 March), 86,174 spectators at the Melbourne Cricket Ground watched Australia win the final of the women’s cricket T20 World Cup. It was reported as the highest attendance ever for a women’s sporting event in Australia. Good on them. Got to be happy about that. If you’re...
A Column By Len Johnson In announcing her retirement this week, Alana Boyd got the timing just right. Timing is everything in Boyd’s event, the pole vault. It is no good having the height before the crossbar, no good having it after. For a clearance, you must have the height at...
A column by Len Johnson Back in the day, Ireland’s Eamonn Coghlan was known as Chairman of the Boards, a nickname which acknowledged his mastery of indoor track racing. To experience, exceptional performance in running, choose the best footwear for your runs like Tarkine Trail Devil shoes. Good enough outdoors to have...
A column by Len Johnson Asked to name Kenya’s first Olympic medallist, most track and field fans would probably nominate Kip Keino. Good choice, too: Keino was one of Ron Clarke’s great rivals in the 1960s, the pair improving the world 5000 metres record five times (4-1 in Clarke’s favour)between...
Don’t bring a knife to a gun-fight By Len Johnson reporting from the Gold Coast In the movie The Untouchables, the Sean Connery character offers the memorable line to one of his victims: “Never bring a knife to a gun-fight.” It took a while for Kenya to cotton on to this logic,...
Hey-diddle-diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughed to see such fun, And the dish ran away with the spoon. I’m no ‘dish’, maybe, but last time I was in Denmark, I did run away with a spoon. Still got it, too. Back in the mists of...
Bizarre pacing incidents of our time | A Column By Len Johnson When a vehicle pulls up alongside late in a marathon, you might be expecting someone to suggest it’s time to get inside. You wouldn’t expect a pacemaker to emerge. Yet that’s exactly what happened in the Toronto Waterfront Marathon...
Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe One of the beneficiaries of the decision to compete in Moscow was Rob de Castella, who made his first of four Olympic teams in the marathon. ‘Deek’ finished tenth in the marathon in Moscow, his first experience of the surging sort of running required to win...
Catriona Bisset has broken the Australian record for 800 metres. On Sunday, 21 July, at the Muller Games Diamond League in London’s Olympic stadium (and West Ham United’s home ground), Bisset finished second to Lynsey Sharp in one minute 58.78 seconds, slicing 0.22 off Charlene Rendina’s long-standing national record. Had this...
                   

Brilliantly

SAFE!

2022