One day at the Montreal 1976 Olympic Games, I watched on as the American 5000 metres representative, Duncan MacDonald, did a training session.
My billet was a few metro stations beyond the Olympic stadium. A relatively short run took me down to the stadium and Village precinct. I ran there...
A column by Len Johnson
My good friend Brian Lenton has asked me to do a column on his latest book: Thredbo, 50 Years Running, 1968-2017.
By way of disclaimer, this is as much of a disclaimer as you are going to get. As Brian once told me in another context:...
I’ve only been to Bathurst twice in my lifetime, but each time I’ve approached it with a sense of excitement.
Not as great, no doubt, as the excitement experienced by Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth who became, in 1813, the first European settlers to cross the Blue Mountains, of which Bathurst...
Pearson string snapped. Tallent and Samuels roll on | By Len Johnson
The fall that wrecked Sally Pearson’s 2015 world championships campaign also snapped an eight-year string in the annual top-10 rankings of Track & Field News magazine.
Flattered by many imitators, T&FN’s annual rankings remain the most authoritative measurement of...
Some blokes take the conventional path to number one in Track & Field News’s prestigious annual rankings.
For over 70 years now the US magazine self-styled, and rightly known as, The Bible of the Sport has assessed athletes against three criteria – honours won; win-loss record; and, sequence of marks...
The big picture numbers were more stable too. Australia got three medals in Tokyo – Nicola Olyslagers silver in the high jump, Moloney and Barber bronzes in the decathlon and javelin. It was three again in Eugene only this time Patterson and Barber contributed gold with Kennedy getting a bronze.
But that was before the whole sport was hit by a missile with the news that Peter Bol had returned an “AAF (adverse analytical finding) for Erythropoietin Receptor Agonists (ERA): rEPO (rEPO).” Synthetic EPO, in other words, which is a proscribed substance.
The recent announcement that there would be no road events at the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games was poignant enough for Australian athletics followers. As Commonwealth marathon champions ‘Deek’, ‘Monner’, Kerryn, Lisa, Michael and Jess are on first-name terms as far as most of us are concerned.
Len Johnson Reporting from the World Champs, London – Runner’s Tribe
Another night in the London Olympic Stadium thin on finals turned out to be thick on drama as Conselsus Kiruto maintained Kenyan honour in one of the events where traditional hegemony was under challenge only to lose another in which...
Tiernan echoes of Melbourne ‘56
A Column By Len Johnson
It might be drawing a long bow, but there’s nothing wrong with drawing long bows: when Patrick Tiernan became NCAA cross-country champion last weekend I saw a link going back to the Melbourne Olympic Games 60 years earlier.
How so? Well, Tiernan...
