The news this week of the collapse of the alleged drug case against Peter Bol was greeted by the athlete as a complete exoneration and by Sport Integrity Australia as “a decision not to progress an anti-doping rule violation for this sample.”
A column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
What if Australia hosts a Commonwealth Games and we don’t win. Not across all the sports. Not in athletics, either.
Well, it can’t be ‘the blackest day in Australian sport’. That moniker has already been gifted – if that’s the right word –...
Ah, Oslo! Remember those Scandinavia nights. Warm but rarely hot. Calm conditions. Great tradition of middle and long-distance track running.
By Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
As the clock ticks remorselessly down towards midnight on 23 July, the qualification deadline for the world championships, there are still many athletes chasing the magical entry standards.
Not just scrubbers either. Circumstances, and the narrower qualifying window (1 October, 2016, for most events), can...
A few years ago, a friend invited me to address a primary school book club about The Landy Era.
The audience was year six students – so, 12 years old for the most part – and their parents. I’d noticed some sport publications on the library display shelf, including one...
The long march to the Marcha | A Column By Len Johnson
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It took us a while to get to watch Jared Tallent in the 50k walk.
About a week, to be more precise. We set off for the Olympic walks course around noon on 12 August and we got there...
Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces, since he looks to the future and to the past.
Janus presided over the beginning and ending of...
Canberra delivers fast footwork | A Column By Len Johnson
A little bit of fancy footwork is always handy in Canberra, the nation’s political capital, where agility and nimbleness were highly prized long before the current incumbent moved into the prime ministerial office.
If the politicians weren’t admiring of the performances...
By Len Johnson
The years 2020 and 2021 have successively been “a year like no other” (even if 2021 seemed depressingly like 2020).
I don’t know about a year like no other, but when it comes to Australia and the Track & Field News annual rankings, 2021 was certainly a year...
Continuing my meandering paper chase through our world cross-country history, we come to the 1977 and 1979 championships in Dusseldorf and Limerick, respectively. The former saw Australia continue to move up with the debut of three 20-year-olds who would be the nucleus of future teams.
But – whatever happened to the women?
Followers of cross-country are used to seeing young runners make significant debuts. Did someone say Kenenisa Bekele? Or Zola Budd who, like Bekele, was a senior world champion before her 20 th birthday. Bekele, indeed, not only won the short-lived short race in 2001, but did the double a year later, all still three months before turning 20.
