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,...
Remember when sport and politics didn’t mix (Yes: I know they always have, but let’s pretend the perfect world in which they don’t actually exists).
Seeking some respite from the tedium of an Australian election campaign that has not yet left – and probably will not leave – the tit-for-tat...
Barely a minute after the start of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games women’s 400 metres, Cathy Freeman was sitting in a crumpled heap on the track.
This was scarcely the pose you would expect of a gold medallist, but it was all Freeman had left after defying one of the...
Catriona Bisset has broken the Australian record for 800 metres.
On Sunday, 21 July, at the Muller Games Diamond League in London’s Olympic stadium (and West Ham United’s home ground), Bisset finished second to Lynsey Sharp in one minute 58.78 seconds, slicing 0.22 off Charlene Rendina’s long-standing national record.
Had this...
Hey-diddle-diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed to see such fun,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
I’m no ‘dish’, maybe, but last time I was in Denmark, I did run away with a spoon. Still got it, too.
Back in the mists of...
Who Wins Again? A Column By Len Johnson
One of the games I like to play as a major championships looms is to ponder which champions might repeat their victories.
The game takes on a heightened significance in Olympic years. No gold shines brighter than Olympic gold, despite the introduction of...
Letesenbet Gidey was heading for the finish line about to become the world cross-country champion, adding to her world championships 10,000 metres title, world records at 5000 and 10,000 metres, stepping from bronze to gold in the world cross-country.
When my wife and I started going out back in 1983, one of our first dates was to attend an ALP campaign rally at Melbourne’s Box Hill town hall. In reality, it was more an acclamation than a rally for Australian Labor Party leader Bob Hawke who, two days...
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,...
A column by Len Johnson
The world cross-country is coming to Australia, just the second time in its history the championships will have been contested in this part of the world. To say that I am happy about that would be a gross understatement.
It was announced this week that the...
