A Column By Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe
The cover of Track & Field News’s December 2017 edition depicts Mutaz Essa Barshim standing on the high jump mat at Zurich’s Weltklasse (and Diamond League final) meeting pointing triumphantly over the bar and out at the reader.
On a cover headed, “Our...
Closing the door after bolt has bolted | A Column By Len Johnson
Usain Bolt didn’t need a third relay gold medal to confirm his place among the Olympic immortals, but getting one ensured he would not end on an anti-climactic note.
Bolt took the baton from Nickel Ashmeade for the...
Thirty-six years after Dave Smith and Tim Erickson should have been Olympic teammates, their sons Dane Bird-Smith and Chris Erickson will be.
Bird-Smith and Chris Erickson have long since joined their fathers in representing their country in international competition, but Rio 2016 will mark their first appearance as Olympic teammates.
Bird-Smith,...
Ethiopian marathoner Kebede Balcha was one of those runners you wouldn’t know was there until they passed you – usually within sight of the finish line. He did it to Dave Chettle in the World Cup marathon in Montreal in 1979 and threatened to do it to Rob de...
But with athletics in Victoria, my home state, emerging from Covid lockdown this weekend (14-15 November) with a ‘community’ cross-country, now is as good a time as ever to dive back into Australia’s history at the world cross-country championships.
Almost 68 years ago, an athlete was plucked from obscurity to represent Australia in the marathon at the Helsinki 1952 Olympic Games.
Amazing. More amazing still was the fact that the athlete in question, Claude Smeal, was serving with the Australian armed forces in the Korean war. A national-class marathoner,...
One night back in the late-1970s, the announcer at Melbourne’s Olympic Park finally gave vent to his exasperation at the cat-and-mouse battle between two of Australia’s leading distance athletes on the track below for the Victorian men’s 5000 metres title.
“Doesn’t anyone want to win this race,” he cried.
I couldn’t...
High heat and oppressive humidity have hung around Melbourne through January like the last, unwanted guest at a New Year’s Eve party.
Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
Many thoughts flashed through my mind after Eliud Kipchoge’s world record marathon.
The first was: “Amazing.” Neither insightful, nor unique, but what else comes immediately to mind after a man runs 2:01:39 for the classic 42.195-kilometer distance.
Just about the second thought, possibly because it leapt out...
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.
