A column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
Most years a runners’ panel is part of Falls Creek Running Week. It was again this year, featuring rising middle-distance star Georgia Griffith, Olympic and world championship distance representative Dave McNeill and London 2017 marathoner Brad Milosevic.
Chris Wardlaw was the MC. Inevitably,...
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...
A column by Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe
No sooner had all us ‘experts’ agreed on one thing – these are not the conditions for a good 5000 – than the Australian championships and Commonwealth Games selection trials delivered the best Australian in-depth 5000 in history.
Never before had three Australians...
It took just one minute 45.71 seconds for Joseph Deng to throw a hand grenade into considerations of the three men to represent Australia in the 800 metres at the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games.
Oh, and let’s not forget the aiding and abetting party to this chaos: I refer,...
For quite a few years now, Athletics Australia’s selection policies have offered the selectors wide discretionary powers in considering the third place in any event.
For almost all that time, many have advocated the selectors make more use of the discretionary clauses. Now, in picking the Gold Coast 2018 team,...
Ours is a sport of precision.
Following wind 2.00 metres per second – everything hunky-dory: 2.01 m/s – a different story. Run a 1:59:59 marathon on a course measuring 42.195km and you’re a barrier-breaking hero. If the course comes in at 42.194km, it just didn’t happen.
Mostly precision is a good...
What is the best performance by an Australian team in a world distance running championship?
Close, but no cigar, if you said the bronze medals won by Australian women’s teams in the short race at the 2006 world cross-country championships and at the 2008 world cross-country championship (by which stage,...
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,...
A column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
Australia’s most famous open-water yacht contest is the annual Sydney to Hobart race.
Most years in these modern times, line honours are taken out by a sleek Maxi (length greater than 21m) boat crammed full of the latest technology. The fastest of these...
A column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
Funny race the marathon.
Last Sunday in London, the British capital’s warmest (I would say hottest, but London doesn’t really do heat) London marathon day ever, Mary Keitany covered the 42.195 kilometres from Greenwich to the finish near Buckingham Palace entirely on her...
