A Column By Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe
Rankings ‘bang’ pre-empts Nitro
I’m as gung-ho for Nitro as the next bro’, but we should not become so bedazzled by the Big Bang Theory of Australian athletics as to ignore minor, but just as spectacular, explosions along the way.
Reference the annual merit...
It’s too early for most of us to be thinking about the Brisbane 2032 Olympic marathons just yet (though it’s worth pointing out that new men’s world record holder Kelvin Kiptum will be ‘only’ 32 years old then).
A column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
I don’t know if the crack of Wayde Van Niekerk’s anterior cruciate ligament rupturing was heard all the way around the world, but it certainly reverberated from Cape Town at least as far as Queensland’s Gold Coast.
At one stroke, Van Niekerk tore...
Well then. That was something, wasn’t it? All summer the middle-distance events have been the spotlight of Australian athletics and, come the national championships, they delivered again. In spades.
Ultimately, though, one or two exceptions aside, the form held up. After all that churning, the cream rose to the top...
If, like me, you think innovation in athletics started with Nitro and those introductions were athletes trot onto the track past a couple of exploding gas canisters, then you’ve probably never heard of the International Track Association.
Fifty years ago this month (I can write that because it’s 31 March...
It’s been the practice of Athletics Australia for more than a decade now to take every athlete who can be selected. It has also been a practice that dare not speak its name: not too often, anyway.
Now ‘pick ‘em all’ has been officially endorsed. In a nationals preview story...
It’s getting to the end of the year, that time when you start to reflect on your favourite things of the previous 12 months.
Of course, we’ve only had just short of 11 months of 2019, which is one of the perils of end-of-the-year reflection. One of my perennially favourite...
One of the stranger things about the world championships is waiting for them to start. There is a hell of a build up and then, two weeks or so out from opening day, we go into a state of suspended animation.
Mention cold calls to any relatively old-time journalist and it’s just as likely beads of perspiration will break out spontaneously on their forehead.
Cold calls – the phone calls you make when you’re not entirely sure of the likely outcome, but there’s a fair chance it won’t be good –...
