A Column By Len Johnson

Len Johnson wrote for The Melbourne Age as an athletics writer for over 20 years, covering five Olympics, 10 world championships and five Commonwealth Games.

He has been the long-time lead columnist on RT and is one of the world’s most respected athletic writers.

He is also a former national class distance runner (2.19.32 marathon) and trained with Chris Wardlaw and Robert de Castella among other running legends. He is the author of The Landy Era.

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...
We’ve gone off daylight saving time. We’ve signed off on the national championships and the Brisbane Track Classic. The Stawell Gift is imminent as I write this. The northern hemisphere track season is just getting going. That all adds up to just one thing. It’s time for cross-country. Time to...
Some readers may be familiar with The Goon Show, an inspired BBC radio comedy program of the day based on the vivid imaginings of Spike Milligan – the grandfather of modern British comedy - as interpreted by Milligan, Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers. One episode concerns a mysterious epidemic of...
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...
If Victoria has a home of cross-country, it would have to be Bundoora Park, in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, across the road from LaTrobe University. They’ve been racing there almost 50 years. For most of that period Victoria has been the powerhouse of Australian distance running, which gives Bundoora Park strong...
Tiernan fastest Australian 10,000 debutant A Column By Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe For those of us yet to meet a statistic we don’t like*, there were some interesting figures surrounding Patrick Tiernan’s Zatopek win. One, Tiernan’s was the fastest debut 10,000 by an Australian male. Two, he became the first Australian...
A column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe Only one event has had its Gold Coast 2018 trial and already selectors and athletes are in a quandary. Actually, make that two quandaries if we count the news that Australia may be restricted to a quota of 73 athletes in the able-bodied...
I never had a record-breaking career, but early in my record-buying career I acquired a disc recorded by British comedian, Peter Sellers. One track tells the tale of a pre-teen pop music phenomenon whose 15 minutes of fame had clearly come and was going fast. Our popster, despairing he hasn’t had a chart-topper for all of three weeks, ends the track I’m So Ashamed with a sobbing plea: “Please Buy This Record.” It’s not a bad metaphor for sport in 2020. The devastating impact of Covid19 was felt early and has endured throughout. By the end of March the Tokyo Olympic Games had been postponed. We are assured that the Games will go ahead same time next year, yet we were assured they would go ahead this year until they didn’t.
By Len Johnson Eliud Kipchoge is re-defining men’s marathon running. An Olympic gold medal, a world record, 11 wins from 12 major marathons (12 from 13 if you include the Breaking 2 project), the last 10 consecutive - will tend to do that. A better question might be: is Kipchoge also...
 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...
                   

Brilliantly

SAFE!

2022