What a race that was last week (Thursday 22). Cameron Myers leads home a stellar 1500 metres field - including 2022 world champion Jake Wightman – runs the fastest time ever by an Australian man on Australian soil, leads six other Australians and four internationals, under 3:40.c
A column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
Ladies and Gentleman, we present for your entertainment a battle for one of the heavyweight titles of athletics – the world cross-country championships.
In the red corner, the defending champion, a course over 10 kilometers, multiple laps over a flat (and maybe a...
When Australia first demonstrated interest in competing internationally at cross-country, we started at the very top.
Not for us the heavy slog of starting small and building, step by step, to something big. No; Australia wanted to bypass the ridiculous and proceed directly to the sublime - to the heights...
I can’t remember whether Ingrid Kristiansen called me, or I called her.
But there was a phone call in March, 1988, the week before the women’s world 15km road race championship in Adelaide. Kristiansen was training at Falls Creek in preparation for a tilt at two world titles within six...
Signifying What, Exactly?
A Column By Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
Never hold an inquiry unless you already know the outcome, goes a wise old political maxim.
It’s a saying I’ve cited before, but as it is a few years since its last mention I refer to it again.
Political inquiries have an...
Noah Lyles is a great athlete, a multiple gold medallist the announcer kept pointing out, conveniently ignoring the fact none of these wins were at 100 metres, the distance being raced at the time. His 9.83 is a moderate performance compared to Usain Bolt’s world record 9.58 set atht eh Berlin 2009 worlds.
A column by Len Johnson
Neil Robbins knew Ron Clarke well enough to call him ‘Fat’, Clarke’s boyhood family nickname. He was a teammate of John Landy and Marjorie Jackson; a clubmate of Les Perry, Geoff Warren and Dave Stephens, ‘the Flying Milko’. He trained with Merv Lincoln and many...
Len Johnson Reporting from the World Champs, London – Runner’s Tribe
Luke Mathews could scarcely have had a worse Rio Olympic experience last year than if he had decided to go out partying with the US swimmers.
Selected for the 800 metres after he had run David Rudisha close in Melbourne and...
When I think about books on running, and athletics more widely, it doesn’t take me long to think about Kenny Moore.
Moore’s book – Best Efforts: World Class Runners and Races – along with Brian Lenton’s collected interviews in Off the Record and Through The Tape – was one of...
Grand week of 1500 | A Column By Len Johnson
Olympic 1500 metres qualifiers for Jenny Blundell, Ryan Gregson and Luke Mathews – it hardly needs saying that it has been a great week for Australian middle-distance running.
In fact, taking into consideration Mathews’s earlier qualifying performance at 800 metres, Melissa...
