Summer: A Column By Len Johnson

Remember those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer? When did they drop the hazy and crazy and become just plain lazy?

We’re talking sport here. And I’m not referring to the whole of summer _ just January. Likewise, I’m referring to just one of the whole range of summer sports _ athletics. When did January, or the greater part of it anyway, become an athletics-free zone?

Athletics has abandoned a period in which it once thrived, the Christmas-New Year-early January period. Depending on the calendar, athletics association offices shut down about a week before Christmas, not to re-open until mid-January. Then, when it gets going again, takes time to re-establish momentum.

This year, there’s nothing much on the national calendar until Sunday, 17 January, when the selection trial for the world cross-country championships is conducted at Melbourne’s Brimbank Park.

To a certain extent, athletics is following the rest of the country. As annual leave entitlements stretched from two to three to four weeks, more and more people came to consider Christmas-January as the perfect opportunity for an extended break.

In sport, we have gone from a multiplicity of competitions over this period, to a shallow pool of major events. The Boxing Day and New Year Tests and, in the second half of January, the Australian Open tennis, leave other sports gasping for the oxygen of publicity.

Mass media has abandoned the broadcast in favour of a broader coverage of a narrower range of sports and events. Then there is the inane coverage of our major winter events for those who can’t live without them. “Dog Bites Man” may still not be a story, but ‘footballer has drink of water after pre-season training session’ _ mystifyingly _ is.

So maybe the decision by athletics _ and so many other sports _ to virtually close up shop at this time makes sense. But it wasn’t always so _ and hasn’t always been even in relatively recent times.

Major championships in our region in Auckland (1990 Commonwealth Games), Sydney (2000 Olympic Games) and Melbourne (2006 Commonwealth Games) have seen adjustments to the domestic season which resulted in a lot of action early in the year. The Auckland selection trials, for example, were in December in Sydney and by early January we were watching the likes of Sebastian Coe, Liz McColgan, Linford Christie and Colin Jackson warming up with competition in Hobart and Sydney.

In 2000, the domestic season kicked off early (the nationals were the final weekend in February). The Canberra meeting, held on the 15^th, saw Lauren Hewitt beat Melinda Gainsford-Taylor and Cathy Freeman over 200 metres in 22.52 seconds, Tamsyn Lewis run her fastest 800 at 1:59.21, Benita Willis produce a solo 4:08.59 1500 and Kris McCarthy break through at 800 with a 1:45.77. There were something like 15-20 Olympic A-standard performances.



These years were aberrations, however, as by that stage the sport had already pretty well abandoned Christmas-New Year. But in earlier times, this was precisely the time when things started to happen.

In 1956, it was all of four days into January when John Landy took on world 880 yards record holder Lon Spurrier of the USA at Olympic Park in Melbourne over Spurrier’s distance. It was Landy’s comeback race after having all of 1955 off and, fit as a trout after training in the mountains while on teaching assignment in the Victorian High Country, he ran the American to within inches, both men clocking 1:51.8.

That was a mere pipe-opener. By the end of the month, Dave Stephens had broken Emil Zatopek’s world record for six miles and Landy had run the first sub-four minute mile on Australian soil.

Regular interstate matches _ New South Wales v Victoria, Victoria v South Australia _ also took place in the January period, with the likes of Betty Cuthbert, Marlene Mathews, Ron Clarke, and Albie Thomas representing their states.

Clarke, as in all things, was a benchmark. In 1965, he had no less than eight races in January, including a world record 13:34.8 5000 in Hobart. That was run on the North Hobart Oval which had a slope from the 220 yards point to the finish. Clarke broke Vladimir Kuts’ record by 0.2 and was seriously concerned that the performance would not be ratified because he ran 13 times ‘down’ the hill and only 12 times ‘up’.

It didn’t matter: Clarke went to New Zealand where he broke the world record again in Auckland on 1 February, his ninth race in 32 days!

The following year, Clarke raced ‘only’ six times in January, but that included a 5000 on New Year’s Day (one of three races for the month at that distance), another 13:31.2 for 5000 (Kip Keino held the world record then at 13:24.2) and a 28:41 for 10,000 metres, so he wasn’t slacking.

Herb Elliott, too, ran regularly in January. He had four races in 1957 (plus a Boxing Day 880 to close 1956) and four more to begin 1958 were highlighted by his first sub-four minute mile at Olympic Park on 25 January, followed by a second five days later.

I know the world has changed, but it must have been great to have such feasts served up back in those days. Beats the heck out of today’s Januaries, I reckon.