One should always pay attention to Track & Field News’ guide to a world championship, but it was the image of the “Welcome to Eugene” sign heading its preview of Eugene 2022 which caught the eye and prompted further thought. There are many ultra-marathon footwear in the market today...
Best marathon ever (except for the others) | A Column By Len Johnson
If you think that the quickest marathon is automatically the best marathon, then don’t bother to read further. Save yourself some time.
Eliud Kipchoge won the elite men’s division of the London Marathon last Sunday in two hours...
A Column by Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe
There wasn’t much reason to remember the 1970s – apart from the fact that we could. It was the decade we regained our memories. It followed the ‘60s and, as everyone knows, if you can remember the ‘60s, you probably weren’t there.
Athletically,...
Len Johnson Reporting from the World Champs, London – Runner’s Tribe
Eight years ago the world seemed to be at Dani Stevens (then Dani Samuels) feet. On a rainy night in Berlin, she handled the difficult conditions far better than her more experienced rivals to become, at 21, the youngest winner...
A Column By Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
Being a selector is often a thankless task – literally, in the sense that not many of those selected ever think to say ‘thank you’, and, figuratively, in the sense that it is bloody hard work.
So perhaps it is fitting that the...
What a week.
First cricket, and a ball-tampering scandal which has now resulted in the Australian captain, vice-captain and a hapless junior player facing suspensions and the coach resigning. Second, amidst all the cricket turmoil, came the raising by a senior government minister of the prospect – quickly shut down,...
By Len Johnson
The drama continued at Budapest’s national athletics centre on day five of the world championships as Australia’s Nina Kennedy went clearance for clearance with world and Olympic champion Katie Moon in the pole vault, sharing the gold medal, and in an even bigger sensation Josh Kerr eclipsed...
Eleanor Patterson took the silver medal in the high jump and Ash Moloney the bronze in the heptathlon. Must have been mixed feelings for Patterson – her first time over two metres, a medal, but pipped at the last by Yaroslava Mahuchik’s first-time clearance at 2.02.
When non-residents characterise Canberra as “the bush capital”, they’re usually evoking a range of emotions, most of them hostile. Contempt for the political and bureaucratic classes sits at the extreme end of that range with scorn, disparagement and bemused indifference following in descending order of malevolence.
Occasionally, though, the descriptor...
On being no.2 | A Column by Len Johnson
Someone observed of Merv Lincoln, who died on 1 May after a long illness, that it was difficult to do him justice as an athlete because you always had to start with the acknowledgment that he was never number one in...
