Hello, hello, hello. Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone at home?
(Pink Floyd, Comfortably Numb)
When World Athletics adopted a system of qualification based on rankings for its own world championships and the Olympic Games, which it conducts under the auspices of the...
Jack Bruce won his first national senior track title. Genevieve Gregson yet again emphasised her competitiveness, and versatility. Jude Thomas broke the national U20 record previously held by Ryan Gregson.
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Such were the main takeaways from the national 3000 metres...
O Brother, Where Art Thou?, is the 2000 Coen Brothers comedy about the adventures – misadventures, mostly – of three escapees from a chain gang on a quest to regain the proceeds of a robbery committed by one of them.
It is a satire loosely based on Homer’s epic Greek...
A column by Len Johnson
No doubt about it: ask any athlete what is the biggest thing in an Olympic year – even an Olympic year which wasn’t going to be an Olympic year until the Covid-postponement made it one, and they will almost certainly reply: “the Olympic Games”. For...
Well, Sunday 4 December 2022, was quite the day in Australian marathon history, wasn’t it?
It’s not every day the Australian marathon record gets taken down. And it’s a very rare day indeed – unique, in fact – when both men’s and women’s records fall on the same day. Elevate...
Many tried. Only a handful succeeded.
Context is everything. One day you’re writing that one good thing about the first day is that you get to see every competitor in the day’s heats and qualifying rounds, even if they’re not yet going head-to-head; the next, you’re hit by the painful...
A legacy event that didn’t deliver a legacy. On life support after five years. A course you couldn’t run fast on.
Sydney staged Australia’s first marathon back in 1909. The city hosted an Olympic marathon in the year 2000. The course was reckoned to be “a beauty,” crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge – for which the descriptor ‘iconic’ is, for a rare occasion, appropriate - from the start in North Sydney, circling the lush Centennial Parklands before making its way westwards to Homebush and the finish inside Stadium Australia.
Written by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come,” Victor Hugo is reputed to once have said.
Like many such ‘quotes’, this may not be a precise rendition of the French poet and novelist’s words, merely the most common paraphrase. Hugo’s observation...
It’s a tough gig in athletics proposing new things. People all over don’t embrace change.
Not all athletes are runners. But the overwhelming majority of them will run a mile away from a change. This is not necessarily a bad thing: to run 100 metres in under 10 or 11...
Pearson string snapped. Tallent and Samuels roll on | By Len Johnson
The fall that wrecked Sally Pearson’s 2015 world championships campaign also snapped an eight-year string in the annual top-10 rankings of Track & Field News magazine.
Flattered by many imitators, T&FN’s annual rankings remain the most authoritative measurement of...
