A column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
What if Australia hosts a Commonwealth Games and we don’t win. Not across all the sports. Not in athletics, either.
Well, it can’t be ‘the blackest day in Australian sport’. That moniker has already been gifted – if that’s the right word –...
At Graham Crouch’s memorial some weeks ago, thoughts naturally turned to some of ‘Gruffy’s’ greatest runs.
The memorial was conducted at Hagenauer Reserve, home to Box Hill Athletic Club. As a committed Box Hill member, Crouch ran some of his best races at the track, including a 3:56.7 mile there...
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 question can be asked of Sydney McLaughlin, whose deeds at the world championships in Eugene astounded us all. Her other-worldly world record of 50.68 seconds in the 400 metres hurdles final was the most stunning individual performance of a championships which saw two other world records – Mondo Duplantis’s 6.21 to win the pole vault gold medal and Tobi Amusan’s 12.12 in the 100 hurdles.
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...
Mention cold calls to any relatively old-time journalist and it’s just as likely beads of perspiration will break out spontaneously on their forehead.
Cold calls – the phone calls you make when you’re not entirely sure of the likely outcome, but there’s a fair chance it won’t be good –...
Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe
Mo Farah won the final track race of his career in the same manner as many of his famous championships victories – looking utterly dominant while winning by centimetres.
This was not just any old race. It was the 5000 metres at Zurich’s Weltklasse meeting, auspicious enough...
By Len Johnson
The years 2020 and 2021 have successively been “a year like no other” (even if 2021 seemed depressingly like 2020).
I don’t know about a year like no other, but when it comes to Australia and the Track & Field News annual rankings, 2021 was certainly a year...
There’s just one thing I want to say about the commentary, which is that I do not ever again want to hear an ‘expert’ earnestly informing me that the Commonwealth Games are NOT THE OLYMPIC GAMES. Here’s a hint fellers (earnest experts are invariably male): the clue is in the name.
A Column By Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe
Rankings ‘bang’ pre-empts Nitro
I’m as gung-ho for Nitro as the next bro’, but we should not become so bedazzled by the Big Bang Theory of Australian athletics as to ignore minor, but just as spectacular, explosions along the way.
Reference the annual merit...
