There’s a lot of noise about shoes right now, a rumble that only intensified when Tigst Assefa ran that other-worldly women’s marathon world record 2:11:53 in Berlin. In case you missed it, Assefa was shod in the very latest adidas super-shoe.
Is Matthew Denny now Australia’s best male athlete?
Undeniably so, I’d say, a judgement that was true even before he burnished already considerable laurels by winning the discus at last weekend’s (16-17 September) Diamond League final. Victory merely confirmed his status.
The women’s race had barely sunk in – a sub-30 from Ethiopia’s world cross-country silver medallist Tsigie Gebreselama, 30:35.66 from Lauren Ryan in third place, breaking Benita Willis’s Australian record set way back in the 2003 world championships – when eight men came in under 27 minutes in the men’s with another five, including Jack Rayner in another AR 27:09.57, between 27:07 and 27:10.
The longer the Covid-19 pandemic takes to work its way around the world, the further we retreat into the confines of our own homes.
Once the earth was our limit (unless you’ve stumped up half a million for a voyage to Mars via Elon Musk). Now, life is restricted to...
Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
The Gold Coast marathon is approaching veteran status. Who would have thought?
Not only that, but the event is looking pretty good as it closes in on its 40th staging and 40th birthday. The first Gold Coast marathon was in 1979, so the fortieth race will...
By Len Johnson (reporting from Doha) - Runner's Tribe
A good journo mate used to describe a story so obvious that even a mug like me couldn’t miss it as “a walk-up start.” Heaven knows where the expression came from, but its implication is that this is the main story,...
Standing on the outside, looking in
The ACT Cross-Country Club grew organically from a handful of runners gathering for cross-country races in 1957 to an entity which nurtured and managed distance running in Australia’s capital city. Nurtured because club members planted the seeds, managed because, in an early example of...
There is a Chinese curse which goes, “May you live in interesting times.”
What seems to be a blessing, in fact, drips irony, the underlying implication being that un-interesting times denote peace and tranquillity. Interesting times, by contrast, are marked by disorder and conflict.
In a similar sense, Harry Summers is...
If I had to pick one abiding memory of the third world championships in Tokyo in 1991 it would be the humidity which descended on your shoulders like a heavy cloak the moment you stepped outside.
No 10,000m at Pre', plus Rio medals returned.
A column by Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe
No Mo' Ten
Pardon me. The realisation hit late. It is the eve of the Prefontaine Classic and I have just noticed there is no 10,000.
It may not have the storied history of our own Zatopek...
