I’m walking along the deserted beachfront road when who else should come from the other direction than Tommy. With a much-younger Irish relative in tow (who, if he was bemused at the pace his 80-year-old companion was setting, had the good grace not to show it), Tommy was looking for the Australian team hotel irst, accommodation for the weekend second.

Tommy had an athlete in the team, you see. Tommy pretty well always had an athlete in the team. This time it was David McNeill. And if a Tom Kelly athlete was competing somewhere even vaguely within Tommy’s reach, he would most likely be there. Whether it was Olympic Boulevard in Sydney, or the coast road at the back of Punta Umbria, you would see him.

Tom Kelly 5 A Column By Len Johnson

Last Saturday night, someone apparently didn’t see Tom Kelly. Crossing a road in Mt Evelyn, in Melbourne’s outer eastern suburbs, Kelly was struck and killed by a car. His body was found at 7:30am on a Sunday morning, a time many of the countless athletes he coached over the years, would have been heading out for a long run.

It is still unclear exactly what happened. What remains sadly all too clear is that, just a few weeks after the sudden death of one prominent athletics coach in Pam Turney, Victorian and Australian athletics has lost another in Tom Kelly.

A strong and determined athlete, the Irish-born Kelly was one of the top Victorian distance runners of his day. He gravitated to the longer distances and was one of the irst Australians to win an international marathon when he came home irst in the Seoul-In- chon race in 1961. It wasn’t a fast run — two hours 40 minutes 25 seconds — but Kelly defeated a strong ield in hot, gruelling conditions. The temperature peaked at 85 °F (30 °C).

In a nice piece of symmetry, one of Kelly’s proudest coaching achievements (of many) would be to coach Brad Camp to a place in the Seoul 1988 Olympic team in the marathon.

It was as a coach that Kelly made his mark. Always with a solid club base, irst at Box Hill, for whom he ran, then at Doncaster, Kelly produced a long line of athletes in a wide vari - ety of events. Camp was one of many senior athletes he coached to great success, but he was unmatched in developing junior talent.

Nick Wall wrote in a tribute on the Athletics Victoria web-site (http://www.athsvic.org.au/ news/detail/vale-tom-kelly) that Kelly had an “incredible feel for coaching”. While not ne - glecting the technical aspects, Kelly’s passion and enthusiasm sparked an instant commu- nication with many of his athletes.

It would be a dificult task to catalogue all the athletes Tom Kelly coached at Doncast- er. Camp was a stand-out, as were other Olympians in Paul Cleary and Natalie Harvey. Melbourne Commonwealth Games 800 metres representative Libby Allen, world championships sprinter David Baxter, Olympic relay representative Elly Hutton and 400 metres hurdler Sonia Brito were others Kelly mentored or inluenced.

The Carney sisters, Emma and Clare – Australian representatives as athletes, world champions as triathletes – were not coached by Kelly, but as Doncaster athletes often worked in with his group.

Also coaching at Doncaster at the same time was John Hirst. The two mined different veins of talent, Hirst adding his links with professional running circuit (his father was legendary ‘pro coach Monty Hirst) to Kelly’s knack at bringing juniors through.

Tom Kelly 6 A Column By Len Johnson

This pairing produced runners of the talent of Dean Paulin, Jason Agosta, Rod De Highden, Sean Quilty and Jason Rock (to add to those named above) as Doncaster challenged traditional winter powers Glenhuntly, Steve Moneghetti’s Ballarat YCW and Box Hill for distance supremacy.

Brad Camp was one of the irst Kelly athletes of whom I was aware. Aggressive and determined (somewhat in the Kelly mould, I’d reckon), Camp ran 2:10:11 to win an Australian title in the 1989 Gold Coast marathon. He never fulilled that talent in the two championship marathons he ran (the 1988 Seoul Olympics and 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games), but he had some memorable battles with Steve Moneghetti on the road – ‘Mona’ won one Victorian 15k title by three seconds, 43:59 to 44:02, I recall — and upstaged To- hihiko Seko on the inal leg of a Chiba Ekiden relay in the great Japanese marathoner’s farewell race.

David McNeill was another obvious beneiciary of the Kelly passion for the sport, though in the instance I recall it did not pay off.

McNeill, Liam Adams and Toby Rayner were left out of a junior world cross-country team in a circular bit of selection logic which somehow said all were good enough, but as the object was to send a team, and four constituted a team, none would go.

Understandably, Tommy was hot under the collar about this and hell-bent on redressing the injustice.

He didn’t win that battle, but as McNeill has gone on to make Commonwealth, world championships and Olympic teams, Adams to represent with distinction at senior world cross-country and Rayner to win Victorian senior titles and miss a world cross-country team by one place, you would have to say he won the war.

Tom Kelly’s passion for athletics, and life in general, will be sadly missed by all who knew him.

Tom Kelly 7 A Column By Len Johnson

A RELAY BIG SHOW

Wow! Thirty-one Australians selected to compete in the IAAF World Relays. That is a number of some signiicance.

The irst edition of the IAAF World Relays will be held in Nassau, The Bahamas, on 24–25 May. Preliminary entries suggest 48 countries and over 700 athletes will be tak - ing part.

To paraphrase Ed Sullivan, whose eponymous program, The Ed Sullivan Show, from 1948 to 1971 remains the longest-running variety program in US television broadcast history — “this is a relay big show.”

The World Relays will be held over 4×100 metres, 4×200, 4×400, 4×800 and 4×1500. In line with all other IAAF world championship events there will be signiicant prize-money, plus the irst eight in both the 4×100 and 4×400 will qualify for the relays for next year’s world championships in Beijing.

A relay big show 8 A Column By Len Johnson

So, incentives for athletes, incentives for federations: everyone a winner, it seems.

But to return to that number of 31 Australians for a moment – it is a big number. To put it into some perspective, it is bigger than any Olympic team Australia sent away until we sent 36 to Tokyo in 1964. Then, it was another 28 years until we sent more than that again, with 39 going to Barcelona in 1992.

Okay, the Australian Olympic Federation / Committee determined team size through most of that history, but even in the world championships era, where track and ield had control of its own destiny, 31 is a bigger number than Australia sent to the irst world championships in Helsinki in 1983 (29).

It is likewise bigger than the teams to Stuttgart in 1993 (25), Edmonton in 2001 (30) and Helsinki in 2005 (20 – what is it we don’t like about Helsinki!), and substantially the same as we sent to Rome in 1987 (33) and Athens in 1997 (35).

Of course, we’re comparing apples with oranges here. For one thing, the Olympic and world championships programs have four relays, not eight as in the world relays. And, while you can send one athlete to do an individual event, a relay squad is a minimum of four. So, broad support for the world relays implies sending a signiicant number of athletes.

Actually, maybe we should consider varying the number of athletes required to run a relay. Imagine a Jamaican men’s 2×200 comprising Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake, taking on Australia’s 4×100. Bolt, personal best 19.19 seconds, and Blake (19.26) have a potential time of well under 38 seconds with one getting a lying start. The Australian record is 38.17.

The IAAF could be onto a winner with the irst World Relays. Who wouldn’t want to go to the Caribbean in May, for a start, so a big tick for location. The Bahamas, too, punches well above its weight in relays, the women’s 4×100 taking successive gold medals in the 1999 world championships and Sydney 2000 Olympics, the men’s 4×400 winning in London in 2012. Enthusiasm will be high.

Indeed, the same could be said of almost any location in the Caribbean. Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, The Bahamas – they all excel at relays. Even tiny St Kitts and Nevis produced a bronze in the men’s 4×100 at the 2011 world championships. In an ideal world, the IAAF could do worse than make the Caribbean the permanent home of the World Relays.

A relay big show 9 A Column By Len Johnson

More broadly, it will be interesting to see how the concept of a relays championship takes off. Relays have always provided some of the highlights of the Olympics and world championships. Usain Bolt’s individual performances in Beijing, Berlin, Daegu, London and Moscow have been hard to top, but his anchor legs on the relays – including the world records in Daegu and London, have provided climactic moments, too.

For all that, relays are at their best when they produce the unexpected. The USA all but owned the men’s 4×100 until a Donovan Bailey-led Canada won irst at the 1995 world championships and then again at the Atlanta 1996 Olympics. Jamaica continues the trend of ‘smaller nation beats superpower’ triumphs.

The 4×400 also produces its quota of drama. Last year’s epic battle between Russia and the USA in the women’s long relay was one example, topped by Antonina Krivovshapka’s epic battle to hold off Francena McCrory up the inal straight.

And who could forget 400 hurdler Kriss Akabusi out-duelling individual 400 champion Antonio Pettigrew along the inal straight to take the 4×400 gold medal for Britain over the USA in Tokyo in 1991.

Then there’s my personal favourite, the dramatic inal change-over at the 1985 World Cup in Canberra in which all but one of the teams was caught up in the pushing and shoving match initiated by the clash between Australia’s Darren Clark and the runner for the Soviet Union. Or the aftermath, in which Africa’s Innocent Egbunike – virtually the only runner to avoid the scrimmage – also being the only one disqualiied.

The baton was knocked from his hand metres before the inish line as theUSA ’s Michael Franks moved to pass. And even if oficials could not sort out the numerous protests over the inal change, they were clear about one thing: in a relay, the baton must cross the line.

I wonder if the irst World Relays will produce anything as dramatic, or perhaps an unexpected triumph by the 31-strong Australian contingent.

A relay big show 10 A Column By Len Johnson

IS THIS THE COMMONWEALTH GAMES FINEST MOMENT?

Bannister versus Landy. The irst man to break four minutes for the mile against the man who broke his record just six weeks later.

The front-runner with seemingly inexhaustible stamina versus the runner with not only a formidable kick but also a belief that he can produce peak physical and psychological effort in only a handful of races a season.

A gathering of nations for the British Empire Games. A North American television audience of up to 100 million viewers.

And, when it was all over, the only two men to have broken four minutes for the mile had done so again, this time with a gold medal on the line.

Was this the Commonwealth Games greatest sporting moment. I think it was; I struggle to ind another matching it.

The year was 1954, the Games the British Empire Games in Vancouver, Canada. Such was the intense interest generated by the three-man – John Landy in Australia, Roger Bannis- ter in England, Wes Santee in America, three-Continents chase to become the irst under four minutes that the Games’ mile was televised live into North America and Canada.

Is this the commonwealth games inest moment? 11 A Column By Len Johnson

Santee, who at one stage had entertained fanciful notions of running the race — damn that Boston Tea Party! – instead watched it in a New York television studio as an expert commentator. After Bannister won, Santee acclaimed him “fantastic”; of Landy’s efforts in leading all-but all the way at sub-four minute pace, Santee added: “He was fantastic, too.”

Wes Santee was the nearly man of the four-minute mile story. Like John Landy, he ran a series of fast times; like Landy, too, he kept falling short. Both stood by as Bannis- ter, with meticulous planning and an intensely focused race program, ran three minutes 59.4 seconds at Oxford University’s Ifley Road track on 6 May, 1954.

Santee then went out and ran 4:01.3 and 4:00.7 in his next two races. Soon afterwards an investigation was launched into his amateur status. He was banned for life, with many believing oficialdom had worked backwards from the verdict.

Landy, of course, ran 3:57.9 (ratiied as 3:58) in Turku on 21 June, 1954, setting the scene for the climactic clash between the world’s greatest milers in Vancouver.

Bannister, who had had a British record disallowed for blatant pacing in 1953, was paced again in Oxford, this time by means which stayed on the right side of legality. The two Chris’s – 1956 Olympic steeplechase champion Brasher, and Chris Chataway – combined to lead him through the irst 3–1 / 2 laps.

Neither Santee, nor Landy, ever had the beneit of such orchestration. Could anyone seriously doubt that if you changed nothing about Ifley Rd, Oxford on 6 May, 1954 other than the main protagonist, that John Landy or Wes Santee would not have been irst to the goal.

Santee was certain. “I don’t think there’s any question that if we had run a paced race like Bannister, we would have broken it,” he said.

But they did not, and Bannister did. The four-minute mile was such a landmark in the sporting and public mind, and so many believed it could not be done, that the means by which it was achieved were a minor, almost subliminal, matter.

The year 2014 brings the sixtieth anniversary of all these events. This Tuesday, 6 May, will be 60 years to the day since Bannister’s feat. The northern hemisphere summer solstice — 21 June — is the 60th anniversary of Landy’s world record. The seventh of August will be sixty years to the day after Vancouver’s Mile of the Century.

The Vancouver mile was the culmination of a series of races, ignited by Landy’s solo 4:02.1 at Melbourne’s Olympic Park on 13 December, 1952, which captured the world’s attention in an unprecedented way. Three “failures” at the Helsinki 1952 Olympics embarked on a quest for the four-minute mile.

Is this the commonwealth games inest moment? 12 A Column By Len Johnson

Landy, Bannister and Santee were treated like modern-day celebrities, attracting world- wide coverage for their races. The inal lead-up to the race in Vancouver saw Landy and Bannister feted every time they stepped into the public eye.

Never before, or since, has so much world attention been focused on a Commonwealth event. In London in 1934, Jack Lovelock (to become the 1936 Olympic champion at 1500) won the mile from Sydney Wooderson and Jerry Cornes – three of the world’s best, certainly, but Bannister and Landy not only attracted a bigger audience, but were unequivo- cally the two best in the world.

The Bannister-Landy race inaugurated a fabulous era in which the inal of the Common- wealth Games mile or 1500 metres was consistently one of the world’s great races. The closing book-end of the era would have been the Filbert Bayi-John Walker world record 1500 metres in Christchurch in 1974, again, a race between the two best in the world.

In between, Herb Elliott beat Merv Lincoln and Albie Thomas in Cardiff in 1958, Elliott going on to set a world record ahead of Lincoln a few days later and then to win the Rome 1960 1500 in a world record.

In Perth in 1962, Peter Snell won, having won the 800 in Rome and about to go on to an 800–1500 double in Tokyo in 1964.

Kip Keino won in 1966 and 1970, taking the Olympic 1500 gold medal in Mexico in 1968 in between and following with the silver in Munich in 1972.

The era did not so much end in 1974 as start to taper. Dave Moorcroft defeated Bayi in Edmonton in 1978, Steve Cram defeated Walker and Mike Boit in Brisbane in 1982, and won again in 1986; Peter Elliott won in 1990. All were among the world’s very best.

The Vancouver mile set off a magniicent era. If there has been a greater moment in Commonwealth Games history, I don’t know what it is.

Is this the commonwealth games inest moment? 13 A Column By Len Johnson

HALF A GLASS TO FILL

Whether you’re a glass half-full or glass half-empty kind of person, one thing remains true about the Australian Commonwealth Games athletics team – half the places in the team remain up for grabs.

Forty-ive athletes were named to the team following the national championships and selection trials held in Melbourne at the beginning of April, but that number included only those who had automatically earned their places under the selection criteria. At least as many more are expected to be added to the inal team early next month.

One of those will be Steve Solomon, Olympic 400 metres inalist in London at the age of 19 and an impressively easy winner of the 400 at the trials. Solomon is studying at Stanford University in California and was not picked in the irst batch of athletes because he had not fulilled the criteria by supporting the domestic season. The only way Solo- mon could possibly miss the team is if three sub-45 second runners jump out of the trees before the deadline (disclaimer here: don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen).

Another pressing his claims is world championships inalist in the discus, Julian Wruck, who has been regularly out near the 65-metre mark in US competition.

Half a glass to ill 14 A Column By Len Johnson

The selectors are also likely to have crystallised their thoughts on the additional marathon runners who will join Jess Trengove and Martin Dent in Glasgow. These two qualiied by dint of inishing in the top 24 (Trengove eleventh, Dent 23rd) in the marathons at the world championships in Moscow last year.

Five men – Delhi silver medallist Michael Shelley, Liam Adams, Scott Westcott, Jeff Hunt and Lee Troop, and ive women – Delhi bronze medallist Lisa Weightman, Nikki Chapple (already selected in the 10,000 metres), Jane Fardell, Melanie Panayiotu and Sarah Klein have achieved at least the minimum standard required to join them in Scotland.

For the rest, though, there are still a few weeks to press claims. Given the relatively short time and relatively few opportunities between the trials and the cut-off date (imposed from outside Australia), one would assume the selectors would need a pretty convincing reason to overturn trials inishing order.

In some instances, that order is compromised by some higher-placed athletes not having qualiied while those behind them have. This group will be among those chasing qualifying performances the hardest in the short time available.

A few have already competed in the US and Japan. The next few weeks bring more and this weekend sees the irst round of the IAAF Diamond League in Doha (early Saturday morning, 10 May, AEST).

Kim Mickle and Alana Boyd, both already selected, were the only two Australians competing in Doha. Dani Samuels, another already in the team, was to throw in Germany before travelling to Shanghai for the second leg of the Diamond League on 18 May.

In between the two Diamond League meetings comes the Tokyo World Challenge on 11 May. Melissa Breen, already selected in the 100 metres, runs there, as do hopefuls James Nipperess (steeple), Melissa Duncan and Bridey Delaney (1500) and ield eventers Hamish Peacock (javelin) and Brandon Starc (high jump).

Delaney and Duncan then hop on a plane to the US west coast to compete – along with rising youngster Anna Laman – in the 1500 at the Oxy College meeting on 15 May. Ryan Gregson will run the men’s 1500 while national champion Brittany McGowan, runner-up Selma Kajan and Zoe Bucklam run the 800.

Kajan is one of those chasing a qualifying time, and if anyone can achieve the A-standard of 1:59.35 that will open the way for three to be picked for the event. The selection policy only allows two B-standard athletes per event, so in events in which no-one has achieved the A-standard (the women’s 5000 and steeple are others), as it stands only two can go to the Games.

Half a glass to ill 15 A Column By Len Johnson

Collis Birmingham, Ben St Lawrence and Brett Robinson will all run the 5000 and Genevieve LaCaze the steeple.

It’s to be hoped that after that, whether you are an optimist, a pessimist, a pragmatist or a sceptic, at least the glass will be more than half full.

Half a glass to ill 16 A Column By Len Johnson

TOMMY A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS

I don’t normally talk football – it can talk (and talk, and talk) for itself. That goes for all four major codes played in Australia: AFL, both forms of rugby, and football (soccer to most of us).

But it is hard to let the death of Tom Hafey earlier this week go by without mention, not because Tommy was a legendary Australian Rules football coach, but because of his role in making regular exercise a commonplace thing in Australian life.

For the few who do not know, Tom Hafey was a run-of-the-mill footballer with the Rich- mond club. Jack Dyer, a revered igure at Richmond, would have called him an “ordinary good” footballer, perhaps adding by way of elaboration that you can see “ordinary good” footballers getting on and off the tram every day outside Melbourne’s Flinders Street station.

But it was as a coach Hafey made his greatest contribution. He took Richmond to four pre- mierships, crossed to Collingwood and took them from bottom to a grand inal in one year (they didn’t win it; nor any under his leadership), then coached both Geelong and Sydney before he gave it away.

Tommy a man for all seasons 17 A Column By Len Johnson

That would have been enough to qualify for football legend status, as it was for Hafey’s great rival coach at Hawthorn, Allan Jeans, and one of the men he mentored at Richmond, Kevin Sheedy. But Tommy Hafey did a lot more. Perenially dressed in shorts and T-shirt, except when on the beach in a pair of Speedos, Hafey was a genuine role model for regular physical exercise.

Others ran every day. Herb Elliott and Percy Cerutty made training at Portsea famous. Ron Clarke and the Glenhuntly gang popularised Caulield Racecourse and Ferny Creek. Albie Thomas and others trained at Centennial Park and other areas around Sydney.

But they would do that, wouldn’t they. Elliott, Clarke and Thomas were runners. Tom Hafey may have been just as obsessive about his daily early-morning swim and his exercise, and his many cups of tea, but he was a footballer, a football coach indeed.

Footballers at the time were notorious for the avoidance of exercise and indulged for the lengths some of them went to avoid it. Neville Fields and some Essendon teammates once took a short-cut through the Botanic Gardens when they were supposed to be running a lap of the Tan. Popular Carlton ruckman Peter ‘Percy’ Jones was alleged to have caught a tram along Royal Parade to complete his lap of Princes Park.

Percy Cerutty advocated exercise for all, but was seen as impossibly eccentric with it. Franz Stampl did great work with his early morning exercise classes, but they were for business- men. New Zealand had the charismatic Arthur Lydiard propounding the beneits of regular jogging and Bill Bowerman copied his programs in the USA.

In the absence of similar role models in Australia, people like Tom Hafey were about as good as it got. But I did interact with both him and Allan Jeans one night in Al- bury. Hafey’s Sydney Swans and Jeans’s Hawthorn played a practice game at Lavington Sports Ground. My sports editor, Michael Gordon, thought it would be a doddle to cover a game in Maryborough in the afternoon and then get to Albury for the second half of the Sydney– Hawthorn match.

Mike was half right, half wrong. Unfortunately, the half-wrong bit was the second half of the game. I got to Lavington as it ended, edging through the crowds as they streamed away from the ground. No problem, I thought, I would ask the coaches the result and get some comments. Job done.

Alas, neither Hafey, nor Jeans mentioned the outcome. Having begun under the impression it would inevitably come up, I was too embarrassed to seize the opportunity to ask the most fundamental question of sports reporting: who won? I gathered lots of rambling quotes and observations about football, but no score. I had to wait until the paper was shoved under my motel room door next morning before it all made sense.

Tommy a man for all seasons 18 A Column By Len Johnson

Footballers, and coaches, in those days tended to be insular. I remember Ron Barassi being asked once at an Athletics Essendon sportsman’s night why his players at North Melbourne trained only twice a week when amateur athletes trained every day. Simple, he replied. That’s what everyone else did. If someone started training more — and won — then other teams would follow.

Hafey, however, actively sought ideas from outside the narrow football world. He was happy to adopt, or adapt, approaches from other sports, other ields, if he could see merit in them. Interestingly, two of his closest followers at Richmond – the Kevins, Sheedy and Bartlett – have a similar outlook, Sheedy in his own long coaching career, ‘KB’ in his broadcasting.

Hafey played considerably fewer than 100 games of VFL football – pretty much the minimum requirement to be considered for greatness as a player (Jeans also fell short of this benchmark). But he made a far greater contribution to sport overall than most who played two and three times as many.

Tommy a man for all seasons 19 A Column By Len Johnson

NO LIGHTNING BOLT, JUST A WARM SURPRISE

The last time I was in the Bird’s Nest stadium, ‘Lightning’ Bolt was the star.

Two gold medals, two world records — 9.69 seconds, 19.30; and a share in a third of both in the 4×100 relay – that does tend to make you sit up and take notice. Usain St Leo Bolt announced himself on the Olympic stage with his own fanfare.

No lightning this time, when I was back at the Bird’s Nest for the IAAF Beijing World Challenge meeting; instead, a pleasant surprise at the crowd, the performances (especially by local athletes) and the state of readiness of the Chinese capital to host the IAAF 2015 world championships.

Olympic stadia meet uncertain fates. Some (a few only, it must be said) continue to host major events. Some are adapted to host other, more popular sports, or resume normal service if they already did. Others disappear.

Berlin, Helsinki, Tokyo and Barcelona are among those falling into the irst category, though Tokyo’s 1964 stadium will be re-built for the 2020 Olympics. Of Australia’s two Olympic stadia, Sydney has reverted to hosting various football codes, while Melbourne, with the single exception of the 2006 Commonwealth Games, has been restored to football and cricket.

No lightning bolt, just a warm surprise 20 A Column By Len Johnson

Atlanta’s Centennial stadium metamorphosised into major league baseball’s Turner Field. Athens two stadia have suffered contrasting fates – the historic Panathanaikon of 1896 is preserved as an icon, the Athens 2004 stadium is on its way to becoming a modern ruin.

Walking into the Bird’s Nest the day before the 21 May IAAF meeting, it was hard to tell which way it was going. The bus taking us from the hotel to the media conference pulled into an internal underground roadway still festooned with Beijing 2008 livery.

A peek at the track revealed the Beijing 2008 banners were still adorning the stands. Not a good sign, I thought.

From that point on, however, things started to turn up. The media conference was well attended and there was no shortage of questions from local media to the ive invited athletes – Justin Gatlin, Veronica Campbell-Brown, Ivan Ukhov and the Chinese duo of long jumper Li Jinzhe and shot putter Gong Lijao.

I’d been asked, in my role as IAAF website reporter, to provide a couple of starter questions for the MC and thought I might also ask an early question if things started slowly. The former were provided, but not used; the latter, not needed.

Returning on competition day, the underground display had not changed substantially — but there was no need for it to do so. Above ground, it was a contrasting matter. All the Beijing 2008 signage had disappeared, replaced by IAAF World Challenge livery, complete with the local sponsor name.

The better news, however, was the crowd. There was one, building from a few pockets of spectators for the early ield events to a well-packed stadium for the main program. Nor were these spectators there just to make up the numbers: they enthusiastically embraced both Chinese and world stars alike.

They saw Justin Gatlin run a world lead in the 100 metres, his second in four days in China, Ana Simic do the same feat in women’s high jump, and world champion Brianna Rollins equal her own world lead in the 100 hurdles.

More than that, there were plenty of local performances to cheer. I suppose Xie Wenjun was the local star in terms of degree of dificulty. Having defeated world champion David Oliver at the Shanghai IAAF Diamond League meeting on the weekend, he backed up in the capital with a win over Moscow silver medallist Ryan Wilson, with Beijing 2008 champion Dayron Robles in fourth place.

Close behind that were wins for Xue Chagnrui, with a national record 5.80, in the pole vault and Zheng Wang in the women’s hammer throw.

No lightning bolt, just a warm surprise 21 A Column By Len Johnson

As signiicant as any of these, with Beijing 2015 and further in mind, may have been the victory of 17-year-old Wang Jianan in the long jump.

With a pre-event best of 8.10, Wang produced a winning distance of 8.09 and another effort of 8.08 to claim the victory. The teenager, from Liaoning Province in China’s north- east, does not turn 18 until August. His proile on the IAAF website listed personal bests for 1000 metres, hurdles, pole vault and youth heptathlon — he has tried them all as a teenager.

At the Australian Youth Olympic Festival last year, Wang won the long jump and was a member of the victorious 4×100 relay team.

It is exciting times for athletics in China. I’ve been fortunate to make several visits in recent years – for the Beijing Olympics, the 2010 Asian Games, the 2011 Universiade and the Shanghai Diamond League for the past three years. I’ve witnessed the Liu Xiang phenomenon irst-hand — notably his comeback win from his post-Olympic surgery at the Asian Games, and the emergence of talent such as Wang.

Liu Xiang was at the Shanghai meeting and is trying to mount another comeback after his second achilles rupture at the London Olympics. If he does make it back again, it may be to his beneit that there is now clearly more to Chinese athletics than one hurdler.

No lightning bolt, just a warm surprise 22 A Column By Len Johnson

A BEAUTIFUL SET OF NUMBERS

Paul Keating coined the phrase “a beautiful set of numbers” in early 1990.

For economic wonks, Keating was speaking about the Australian current account igures for the December 1989 quarter, but the phrase is much too good to be restricted to eco- nomics, which is much better summed up by Thomas Carlyle’s descriptor as “the dismal science’.

Whether there were quite enough to constitute a set is debateable, but I was struck by some beautiful numbers this week.

First, there was one from the indefatigable distance running statistician, Ken Nakamura, informing us that Bedan Karoki and Stephen Sambu became the 49th and 50th men to run under 27 minutes for 10,000 metres at the Pre Classic in Eugene last Friday.

Then, as it has been doing regularly of late, the high jump threw up some impressive ig - ures of its own.

A beautiful set of numbers 23 A Column By Len Johnson

At Rome’s Golden Gala IAAF Diamond League meeting, Mutaz Essa Barshim and Bohdan Bondarenko had three close tries each at 2.43 metres. Neither got it in the end, Barshim winning at 2.41, but it continued an early-season trend in the event that seems inevitably to be leading to someone breaking Javier Sotomayor’s long-standing world record of 2.45.

First, the 10,000 metres. It is 21 years since Yobes Ondieki ran 26:58.38 to become the irst man under 27 minutes. Now, 49 others have joined him, led by Kenenisa Bekele’s world record 26:17.53 in Brussels in 2005. It is an amazing explosion of depth, even if it is largely conined to the east African nations, overwhelmingly Kenya.

Ironically, Kenya has provided 31 of the 50 sub-27 men, all the while winning no Olympic and just one world championships gold medal (Charles Kamathi, in Edmonton in 2001) in the 21 years since Ondieki’s break-through.

On world records, Kenya fares a little, just a little, better: Willie Sigei and Paul Tergat have both held the world mark in that time.

Overall, the rate of progress has slowed. One of the last of the Flying Finns — Taisto Maki was the irst under 30 minutes in 1939. Even with World War II intervening, it was only 15 years before the great Emil Zatopek went under 29, then another 11 until Ron Clarke ran the irst sub-28 with 27:39.4 in Oslo in 1965.

It then took 28 years until Ondieki broke 27 minutes and in the 21 years since we have seen just over 40 seconds clipped off that landmark performance. Bekele’s world record has remained unchallenged (other than by him) for nine years now, it is six since anyone (Bekele again!) broke 26:30 and nine since anyone other than Bekele did so.

Some more beautiful numbers: Rupp set a new US record, breaking his own previous mark set in Brussels two years ago, and moved up two places to 15 th on the event all-time list. One of those he passed was his training partner, Olympic and world champion Mo Farah, which must be some consolation for having seen Mo’s back at the past three major cham - pionships (albeit a much closer view than most with seventh, second and fourth place, re - spectively).

One delating, if not depressing, number stands out among all this. Unless he is surpris - ing well hidden at the moment, and with the inancial impetus all in the direction of the marathon – damn that dismal science! – it seems we could be waiting quite some time yet for anyone to approach 26 minutes.

The high jump record, now, that is a different matter. Sotomayor’s 2.45 mark has stood since 1993 and with so many men at and over 2.40 in the past two seasons appears to be living on borrowed time.

A beautiful set of numbers 24 A Column By Len Johnson

A caution here: 2.45 is a long way off the ground (well, durr, you might say). And a clus- ter of performers approaching a mark does not necessarily mean it will be exceeded anytime soon. We only have to look to a world record celebrating its 60 th birthday this year for an example.

When Gunder Hagg ran 4:01.3 for the mile in 1945 it seemed inevitable that the four-minute barrier would soon be breached – even allowing for the recovery of the rest of Europe from war. Yet a combination of factors – the disqualiication of Hagg for ‘professionalism’ among them – saw it take nine more years before Roger Bannister and then John Landy went sub-4 minutes.

Even once Helsinki Olympic champion Josy Barthel and then Landy reignited the inal push with 4:02 performances late in 1952, starting a three-way race for the honour between Landy, Bannister and Wes Santee – it was still another 18 months before the “inevitable” happened with Bannister’s 3:59.4 on 6 May, 1954.

So the fact that both Barshim and Bondarenko went oh-so-close to 2.43 in Rome, that Ivan Ukhov has also gone 2.41 this year and Derek Drouin 2.40 does not necessarily mean the current record is now toast.

With none of these four having a major global championship this year, however, it seems certain there will be plenty of attempts on the record in the remainder of the year.

As an earth-bound distance runner, I’ve always had a fascination at how high people can jump, either unaided in the high jump, or levering themselves off the ground in the pole vault.

Three of the four vertical records had stood for years as we entered 2014. Sotomayor’s high jump since 1993, Sergey Bubka’s pole vault since 1993 (indoor) and 1994 (outdoor), and Stefka Kostadinova’s high jump since 1987.

The latter won’t go any time soon. Bubka has been supplanted by Renaud Lavillenie. No offence to the holder, but wouldn’t it be great to see the men’s high jump record go, too.

A beautiful set of numbers 25 A Column By Len Johnson

CLASSIC DISTANCE CONTESTS FOR GLASGOW

Mo Farah to run the 5000 and 10,000 metres in the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games — the news could hardly have been any better for distance running fans.

For Commonwealth distance runners of the non-Farah type, of course, the news could hardly have got any worse. But that’s another matter.

Every time I go into the Athletics Victoria ofices at Melbourne’s Albert Park, I see a wide-angle lens picture of the men’s 5000 metres from Melbourne 2006. It’s early stages of the 5000, the ield strung out against the backdrop of the Great Southern Stand.

But already the pattern that would last race-long is set. Craig Mottram is up front sharing the lead with Kenyans Gus Choge, Benjamin Limo and Joseph Ebuya. Mo Farah is pretty much mid-pack.

That is how they inished, too. The teenaged Choge won the gold medal from Mottram — both men breaking 13 minutes – with Limo taking the bronze medal and Ebuya fourth. Farah was an undistinguished ninth of the 19 runners.

Classic distance contests for Glasgow 26 A Column By Len Johnson

Times change. None of the irst four will be back in Glasgow in a few weeks time. Farah will be there as the closest thing to an invincible track distance runner as the world has seen in recent years. Of six global championships at 5 and 10 in the past three years, he has won ive. The sixth, he lost by ‘a poofteenth’ to the inspired sprint of Ibrahim Jeilan.

Farah did not go to Delhi four years ago, though he won distance double at the European championships a couple of months earlier. So Glasgow will be the irst Commonwealths he has competed at since becoming MO FARAH, world and Olympic double champion at 5000 and 10,000 metres.

Moses Kipsiro of Uganda won the distance double in Delhi, ighting off one set of Kenyans in the 10,000 metres and a fresh lot – led by 2003 world champion Eliud Kipchoge – in the 5000. They were exciting races, but the ‘Mo’ factor will add an extra frisson in Glasgow.

It has been good news all round for the middle and long-distance track events these past few weeks. A few big names have fallen by the wayside – Asbel Kiprop and reigning 1500 champion Silas Kiplagat, are two – but by and large the track distances in Glasgow are likely to boast some of the best names in the world right now.

David Rudisha has conirmed for the 800 metres and it will be fascinating to watch his continued progress in his comeback from a serious knee injury. Nijel Amos, the silver medallist to Rudisha in the London Olympic world record race, is also intending to compete.

Rudisha was given a wild card into the Kenyan team, as was dual Olympic and world champion steeplechaser Ezekiel Kemboi. Whoever turns up, it is hard to see the Glasgow men’s steeple being anything other than a Kenyan beneit, but this year’s world leader Jairus Birech is also in the team.

World champion Milcah Chemos leads the women’s steeple hopes.

World champion, and Australian visitor this summer, Eunice Sum is in the women’s 800 metres and 2014 world leader (at 3:57.05) Hellen Obiri in the 1500. Mercy Cherono, who also ran in Australia this summer, is running the 5000 metres.

The Kenyan trio in the women’s 10,000 metres looks formidable. Leading the way are Joyce Chepkirui and Emily Chebet, irst and second in the Zatopek 10,000 two years back. Chebet is a dual world cross-country champion, in 2011 and 2013, and the third member of the trio, Florence Kiplagat, won the world cross-country in 2009.

Isaiah Koech, bronze medallist at the world championships last year, and Caleb Ndiku will spearhead the Kenyan challenge to Farah in the 5000 metres (which will be run before the 10,000 in Glasgow) while Josphat Bett, one of the 31 Kenyans to have broken 27 minutes for 10,000 metres, is in the longer event.

Classic distance contests for Glasgow 27 A Column By Len Johnson

John Kelai is back to defend the marathon title he won in Delhi. He will again meet the silver medallist, Michael Shelley.

Of course, it would not be a Kenyan team without at least one “unknown Kenyan”. Fitting that role perfectly in Glasgow is 18-year-old Ronald Kwemoi. The Japan-based Kwemoi won the 1500 at the Kenyan championships in 3:34.6 – a creditable time in Nairobi’s 1600m altitude, improving his personal best from 3:42.5.

The twitter feed on Japan Running News, informs us that Kwemoi became the 100th Kenyan to run faster than 3:36. The “unknown Kenyan” may well be one of whom to be- ware in Glasgow.

There are still seven weeks to go to the Commonwealth Games and a lot can change in any team, much less the Kenyan team, in that time.

But Farah’s presence, and a strong Kenyan team bent on repeating their Delhi feat of topping the athletics medal table, suggests we are in for some classic distance races in Glasgow next month.

Classic distance contests for Glasgow 28 A Column By Len Johnson

RISELEY FINALLY GETS HIS RECORD

It was great to see Jeff Riseley get his timing right in Ostrava this week, racing to an Australian and Oceania record over 1000 metres.

Riseley, selected for the 800 and 1500 metres at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow next month, was spot on at the cross-over distance in between. His two minutes 16.09 seconds put him third behind Kenyan-born Turk Ilham Tanui Ozbilen, 2:15.08, and France’s Pierre-Ambroise Bosse, 2:15.31.

Fourth was Mohammed Aman, world champion indoor and out at 800 metres. Not a bad scalp to collect.

Riseley took 0.52 off Grant Cremer’s previous national record, set in 2000, and just on half- a-second off John Walker’s area record of 2:16.58 set way back in 1980 in Oslo.

As noted, this time Riseley got his timing right, continuing an encouraging trend so far in the Commonwealth Games year. So often throughout his career it has seemed he has got it just wrong.

Riseley inally gets his record 29 A Column By Len Johnson

The matter of records, for a start. Riseley is the only Australian man to have broken 1:45 for 800 metres twice, but his best of 1:44.48 in 2012 falls an agonising 0.08 short of the national record Ralph Doubell set in winning the gold medal at the Mexico City 1968 Olympics. Eight hundredths of a second is not much more than the blink of an eye. If you ‘react’ to the starting gun that fast in the 100 metres, you are automatically adjudged to have false-started.

Riseley had been even closer to Cremer’s 1000 record, coming within 0.02 and 0.14 on two separate occasions.

Going further back, Riseley started his career rise in 2006, just too late for Commonwealth Games selection. He wasn’t good enough to get invited to compete in the Games selec - tion trials, having to content himself with running the Victorian title instead (which at least gave him a run on the MCG).

By the end of 2006, Riseley was under 1:50 and a few months later improved to 1:46.88 at the 2007 Melbourne Track Classic. He forced his way into the Osaka world champion - ships team with a 1:46.35 in Europe. But he had peaked too early and did not make the i - nal either in Osaka or at the World University Games in Bangkok a week or so before that.

It was a similar story in 2008. A 3:36.03 in Rome prompted a successful push to add Riseley to the Olympic team despite the fact that the AOC deadline had passed (ultimately, both the AOC and AA waived it). But Riseley did not advance through the heats in Beijing.

The world championships in 2009? Semi-inals of the 1500. Commonwealths 2010? In- jured, this time and forced to withdraw. In both 2011 and 2012, Riseley went from a qualifying position in the inal straight to being run out in the heats of the 1500 (Daegu 2011) and 800 (London 2012).

Now, it seems, the timing might be going Riseley’s way for once.

He has certainly joined some notable company at the top of the Oceania and Australian all-time list for the 1000 metres. The distance may not be run that frequently, but every top middle-distance runner has had a decent crack at it more than once in their career.

It has always been a quality record, too. Sydney 2000 Olympic 1500 champion Noah Ngeny set the current world mark in 1999. Before that, dual Olympic champion Sebastian Coe held it for 18 years at 2:12.18. Said Aouita, Steve Cram and many others had multiple -at tempts to erase Coe’s record.

It is the same in Australia. Way back, John Landy had a crack at the world record during his stellar 1954 season. He ran 2:20.9, missing the mark by half a second.

Riseley inally gets his record 30 A Column By Len Johnson

Riseley now sits atop an Australian list ahead of Cremer, Mike Hillardt, Ryan Gregson and Pat Scammell. Further down the list are the names of Herb Elliott, Peter Bourke and Ralph Doubell.

On the Oceania list, Riseley now leads Olympic 1500 champion John Walker (2:16.57), silver medallist Nick Willis (2:16.58), 800 and 1500 champion Peter Snell (2:16.6), Cremer and Rod Dixon. That’s pretty nice company he’s keeping.

All this, too, from a man who on Easter Monday feared he might not be running again this year.

So it is very deinitely a change of fortune for Riseley, not to mention a deserved reward for a talented athlete. Let’s hope his good timing lasts all the way through the Common- wealth Games, and beyond.

Riseley inally gets his record 31 A Column By Len Johnson

TRIALS AND VERDICTS

“Never set up an inquiry unless you already know the outcome” is an old political maxim, the wisdom of which is underlined at regular intervals. Broad-ranging, open-ended inves- tigations almost invariably lead to unforeseen, not to mention unwelcome, consequences.

A sporting corollary might go “never hold a trial if you already know who you want in the team”, or, “if you don’t need a trial, you need not to have a trial.”

Unnecessary trials complicate selection for athletic teams. Favourites no-height, fall over, foul three times in the long jump, that sort of thing and the selection process degener- ates into inding a rationale for getting said favourite(s) into the inal team. This can be dificult; in America, with its irst three qualiied athletes past the post selection system, downright impossible.

Jamaica is holding its national championships, the selection trials for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, right now. The situation in the men’s 100 metres, at least as far as the biggest names go, is something like this:

— Usain Bolt is not running, but has told the selectors he is available for the Games, even if only for the relay squad;

Trials and verdicts 32 A Column By Len Johnson

— Yohan Blake, who said at the outset of his comeback from injury season that he wanted to do the sprint double in Glasgow, now says through his agent that he will not be competing at all. It’s not in the interest of his long-term goals for the next few years, you see;

— Asafa Powell, who was missing the trials due to a doping suspension, applied to run them when the Court of Arbitration for Sport granted him and fellow-sprinter Sherone Simpson a temporary reprieve pending a hearing on 7 July. Now he has skipped them and may run the Paris IAAF Diamond League meeting instead.

Whatever the outcome of the 100 metres at the Trials, you wouldn’t want to be picking the three men in Glasgow. Of course, four years ago in Delhi, Jamaica sent Lerone Clarke, and he won. There is plenty of sprint talent in the Caribbean nation.

It’s as well there is controversy around the Jamaican trials because it has been a quiet few weeks in athletics recently. The New York Diamond League meeting ushered in a temporary lull which was only partially dispelled by Ostrava’s World Challenge last week.

It is hard to see why this should be so. The lull has been apparent only. The seeming void has in fact been illed by national championships and the European Team Championships (direct descendant of the old Europa Cup meeting).

These competitions, sadly, do not seem to count for as much anymore. The US championships seemingly lose relevance when America is not selecting a team for a world cham - pionships or Olympic Games. Being the best in the west no longer carries the cachet it once did.

Ditto other national championships, only more so: athletes, by and large, may continue to rate a national title a valuable achievement to attach to their c.v., but few others seem to care. Unless a meeting has selection dependent upon its outcome, it is just one more reason for non-specialist media to ignore it. Thankfully, athletes largely continue to support championships, but who knows how long that will last.

National championships have slipped down the pecking order inexorably over the past 20–30 years. In the 1960–80 era, they were the natural stepping stone to the Olympics and, then, world championships. In the eastern bloc, national titles and / or Olympic Days, were about the only major domestic competitions for some of the world’s best athletes.

Now, other competitions intrude. It has been noted before (including by this correspondent) that the high-proile of the Diamond League, which is welcome, comes at some cost to other competitions which are pushed another rung down the ladder.

Trials and verdicts 33 A Column By Len Johnson

Coalescing with that development has been the collapse of mainstream media. One of the ironies of the digital era is that niche markets are covered better than ever – no matter what your sporting interest someone will be blogging it, live-steaming it or, jackpot, it might even be on cable with expert commentary.

But the mainstream media covers less and less. Rather than broadcast, newspapers, radio and free-to-air are restricting what they cover and earlier deadlines for newspapers means that fewer events taking place the night before are even able to be covered.

I have recently had this brought home to me in two ways, having done some contributor coverage of AFL football (good) but not been able to read my own copy in the following morning’s paper (bad). If it happens after 7pm at night these days, you are less likely to read about it in the following morning’s The Daily Bugle, more likely to be referred to thedailybugle.com.au.

Ten years ago, it was editorial anathema to refer to events that were not in the paper. Early editions of Saturday morning papers thus contained no reference to Friday night football, the logic being it was better to pretend it had not happened than to draw readers’ attention to the fact that it had, but it was not in their paper.

Now, all newspapers regularly mention events that they have not been able to cover within their deadlines and advise readers to go to the website for details.

High time we had an inquiry into all this, you say? Could be: we already know the answer. Trouble is, we don’t like it.

Trials and verdicts 34 A Column By Len Johnson

KIRANI JAMES FIRST FOR GRENADA

It seems like everything Kirani James achieves comes with the tag “irst for Grenada.”

First world youth champion for Grenada, irst world junior champion for Grenada, irst world champion for Grenada, irst Olympic champion for Grenada – the list of irsts seems endless.

Mostly, it’s just “irst”, as in irst in the race. It was again at the IAAF Diamond League meeting in Lausanne on Thursday night, where the 21-year-old Grenadian beat world champion La Shawn Merritt in the 400 metres.

You can make too much of all these irsts. After all, as Ron Clarke once observed about one of his world records, “it might be a world record to you, but it’s just a ‘pb’ to me.”

No doubt Kirani James does not go out thinking of anything he might do as a irst for Grenada. As an athlete in an individual sport, he is irst and foremost doing things for him - self. That applies even if he is conscious of the impact it has on his country.

Kirani James irst for Grenada 35 A Column By Len Johnson

And where it comes to Merritt, James cannot be blamed for thinking of each win as, irst and foremost, simply ‘coming irst’. The pair have built up an astonishing rivalry over the past few years as James’ rise has coincided with Merritt’s return from an embarrassing doping suspension.

The pair came into this season with James holding a 5–4 edge in head-to-head meetings. Merritt levelled the score with a win at the Drake Relays at the end of April only for James to take the lead back with a couldn’t-be-closer win at the Diamond League Prefontaine Classic. Both men ran 43.97, James just getting the photo-inish verdict.

Now, James has taken the irst set, to use a tennis term in the Wimbledon fortnight. His victory in Lausanne makes it 7–5. Adding a littlepiquancy, his time of 43.74 (Merritt 43.92), puts him equal ifth with his rival on the all-time list. Merritt ran his 43.74 in winning the world championships inal in Moscow last year.

The only men to have run faster are world record holder Michael Johnson (43.18), former world record holder Butch Reynolds (43.29), Jeremy Wariner (43.45) and Quincy Watts (43.50). The only man to have run faster than Merritt in Lausanne and still lost is Reynolds, who ran 43.91 behind Johnson’s 43.44 in the 1996 US Olympic Trials.

By the way, did I mention that James is the only non-US athlete to have broken 44 seconds. Another irst.

This is indeed a rivalry to be savoured. The only event not to have featured a Merritt-James clash in the inal in recent times was the London 2012 Olympics, when the American crashed out in the heats with a hamstring injury.

Usually, it’s been 1–2, though in last year’s world championships inal James faded badly to seventh place up the straight as Merritt stormed away to win.

In a decision no doubt still being toasted in Glasgow as I write, James has declared his intention of running the Commonwealth Games. Grenada has never won a gold medal at the Commonwealths. You wouldn’t want to bet against Kirani James adding “irst Com- monwealth gold medal for Grenada” to his list of irsts.

Elsewhere in Lausanne, the men’s high jump continued to produce its share of impressive statistics. It has seen pretty well every one this year other than the most coveted — world record.

The feeling that it is only a matter of time was reinforced in Lausanne with Bohdan Bondarenko wining at 2.40 metres. Another Ukraine jumper – Andrey Protsenko – became the sixth man to clear 2.40 this year, losing out on count-back.

Kirani James irst for Grenada 36 A Column By Len Johnson

Still the stats kept accumulating. Four men cleared 2.38 or better – with Mutaz Essa Barshim and Olympic champion Ivan Ukhov the other two. Derek Drouin of Canada, who has cleared 2.40 this year, went out at 2.35. Drouin, too, will be in Glasgow for the Com- monwealths.

Sotomayor’s world record 2.45 remains unbreached. Given the build-up just below that height, it seems it must go, if not this season, then real soon.

The middle-distances also had Glasgow connotations with Eunice Sum and Mercy Cherono taking the 800 and 3000 metres, respectively.

There was also a win in the 1500 for the precocious Japan-based Kenyan teenager Ronald Kwemoi. He swept around the ield as the leaders battled it out up the inal straight to re - cord an easy win in 3:31.48, the fastest time in the world for a junior in 10 years.

Kwemoi won the Kenyan trial in 3:34.6. Before that he had not broken 3:42.

Commonwealth champion Silas Kiplagat, who is not defending his title, was second in 3:31.81, and James Magut, who will be competing in Glasgow, third in 3:31.91.

Kirani James irst for Grenada 37 A Column By Len Johnson

DEEK STILL WEARS AN INDELIBLE STAMP

When Robert de Castella ran a world record to win the Fukuoka marathon in 1981, I remember Chris Wardlaw writing about him in Australian Runner magazine.

“I caught Deek at Olympic Park the weekend after,” Wardlaw wrote, “and he looked pretty much the same bloke I had run with since 1974, except now he had 2:08:18 engraved on his forehead.”

He didn’t really, of course. Years before alternative worlds could be constructed in cy- ber-space, Deek’s was a virtual tattoo. Indeed, it was a virtual world record, because until it was conirmed some years later that the New York course on which Alberto Salazar had run 2:08:13 a few weeks before Fukuoka had been approximately 150 metres short, it was assumed Salazar held the world best.

The following year, de Castella out-duelled Juma Ikangaa in a memorable Commonwealth Games marathon in Brisbane to win the gold medal in 2:09:18. It was the fastest marathon ever run in Australia, and remained so until a hitherto-unknown Kenyan, Silah Limo, won the Gold Coast marathon in 2:09:14.

Deek still wears an indelible stamp 38 A Column By Len Johnson

Just as Deek’s marathon world record virtual tattoo has long since been erased, now his Australian all-comers’ record one has been wiped off also. One thing about the erasure of virtual tattoos is that it is a less-painful process than the removal of real ones.

Back in 1981, the news about world records and world bests came more slowly. Chris Wardlaw, in that same piece, described the process by which word of Deek’s Fukuoka -tri umph on 6 December, 1981 spread through the Melbourne (and Australian) running community.

Don the Groundsman phoned at 5:08pm. ‘I’ve just got the result. First, Deek 2:08:18. Gotta ring a few people.’ I still don’t know how he beat me to the result.

I tried to phone Pat Clohessy. He was possessed (engaged). Tim O’Shaughnessy was at a barbeque. He tried to ring Pat, who was engaged, and me, engaged. He said to Marion, his spouse — ‘Must be a big one, the phones are running hot.’

I counted up the 15 phone calls (no embellishment, but admittedly three were with Pat!) I had that night. All I could say was ‘unbelievable, incredible, etc.’

It is not that long ago, but that was the way news spread back then. I remember being excited to discover that you could go down to the Radio Australia ofice at the bottom of Lonsdale Street in Melbourne and, if you asked politely, be allowed to rummage through the paper mountains of overseas cable print-out to ind European athletics results.

A few years later, when I started at The Age, I established a contact in the IAAF media department (probably the press department back then, actually) who was happy to go pa - tiently through the meeting results picking out the Australians while I waited impatient- ly on the phone.

Alternatively, I would cold call the meeting hotel, ask for an Australian athlete, and ask bluntly “how did you go last night.” This yielded great results when the athlete had gone well; when they had performed badly – not so much.

Anyway, Deek’s virtual tattoos are fading one by one. He has three left – the marathon, the one hour and the 20km marks, though it must be said the irst of those is contentious. Deek’s 2:07:51 in Boston in 1986 is still regarded as the Australian record despite the fact that it was set on a course that is no longer eligible for record purposes.

As a personal disclaimer, I must say I have no problem with that, even though some record-keepers do.

Deek still wears an indelible stamp 39 A Column By Len Johnson

MICHAEL, ELOISE DO IT THEIR WAY

There was much to like about athletics at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

The fact that it was on at an historic venue, for one thing: Hampden Park is the National Football Stadium, a venue known round the world for the huge crowds it drew to matches against the Old Enemy, England, or to Scottish FA Cup inals.

Even some of the Australian team’s volunteer drivers — the experienced, not old, ones! — could recall being taken to the ground when crowds of 130–150,000 were crammed in.

If you saw an aerial shot of the stadium, Hampden back then comprised the present stadium plus “Little Hampden”, the warm-up track for the Games. The crowd thronged right around the venue and, with little or no terracing, those at the back had no means of knowing what was going on other than by word of mouth conveyed from those in the front.

Still they went, still they cheered, even the louder if Scotland were on the winning side against England.

Michael, Eloise do it their way 40 A Column By Len Johnson

I don’t know the full reason why Scotland built a separate stadium for its national ixtures, but I suspect it had a lot to do with the sectarianism which divided the two biggest football clubs – Celtic (Catholic) and Rangers (non-Catholic). Just like the Sydney–Melbourne rivalry led to the establishment of neutral Canberra as the national capital, so, I suspect, Celtic-Rangers rivalry meant a neutral venue had to be found for the national stadium.

Anyhow, it has left Glasgow with three major stadia, all of which were used for the Games. Celtic Park staged the Opening Ceremony, Ranger’s Ibrox Stadium the Rugby 7s and Hamp- den the athletics and the Closing Ceremony.

Athletics is in a win-loss situation in such arrangements. The obvious downside is that the sport does not gain a major facility from the Games – Manchester’s Commonwealth Stadium is now the home of Manchester City, the MCG is, well, it’s still the MCG; but the win is that such famous venues provide a built-in atmosphere for major events.

Just as the MCG proved such a memorable venue in 2006, so Hampden did eight years later. The atmosphere, the famous ‘Hampden Roar’, was something to savour.

Australia had lots of heroes over the seven days of athletics in Hampden – gold medallists Sally Pearson, Dani Samuels and Eleanor Patterson on one memorable night; Para-Sport athletes, wheelies Angela Ballard and Kurt Fearnley, and Jodi Elkigton; Alana Boyd and Kim Mickle.

The two I wish to single out, however, did not triumph at Hampden Park – one, indeed, did not even win a medal.

Michael Shelley received his marathon gold medal at Hampden, but he won it on the streets of Glasgow on a course starting and inishing in the city’s famous Glasgow Green parklands.

Eloise Wellings inished only ifth, not even her best result in her three Commonwealth Games appearances, but it was the manner of her performance in the 5000 metres which caught the eye.

Each can be said to have done it their own way.

Michael Shelley brings a range to the marathon which would be the envy of most. Sub-3:40 at 1500 metres, sub-28 at 10,000, a 1:01:27 at half-marathon – he has all the weapons of a modern marathoner.

For whatever reason, however, Shelley prefers to race sparingly, concentrating on high-proile targets and eschewing almost everything in between. The comprehensive athletics data-base All-Athletics.com inds only three races for Shelley so far this year and found only three for all of 2013.

Michael, Eloise do it their way 41 A Column By Len Johnson

Such a narrow focus would do in the heads of many athletes, but Shelley seems to ind the balance of work and training just right for him. His run in Glasgow to become Aus- tralia’s fourth male Commonwealth champion was superb. He sat back off the early surges, then took over beyond 35k to win by almost a minute and joins Dave Power, Robert de Castella and Glasgow team chief Steve Moneghetti – not bad company, that – as Com- monwealth gold medallists.

In common with the other three, Shelley is now a dual marathon medallist. ‘Deek’ won two gold, Power and now Shelley, have a gold and a silver, ‘Mona’ has the full set.

I irst met Eloise Wellings after the 1999 Australian cross-country championships when she was one of a group of athletes who came to investigate Couran Cove resort as a po - tential base for the following year’s Olympics. The previous day she had trounced the better-known Melissa Rollison in the U18 women’s national.

Wellings never made the Sydney team, suffering the irst of many injury setbacks. Ditto Athens and Beijing, though she inally made the Olympic team for London 2012, running the 5000 and 10,000.

It often seems Wellings is held together by bits of string – if so, they are the strings of a Stradivarius, not a mere iddle. When the strings are in tune, they produce amazing music.

The Commonwealth Games years of 2006 was probably Wellings’ best. Some career highlights: 2006 – fourth Commonwealth 5000 in 15:00.69 (pb) behind Isabella Ochichi, Jo Pavey and Lucy Wangui; sixth in Zurich 5000 in 14:54.11 (pb, 2 nd all-time behind Benita Willis); fourth in World Cup 3000 in 8:41.78 (2nd Australian all-time behind Willis); 2011, 31:41.31 (fourth all-time behind Willis) for 10,000 in Palo Alto.

Now Glasgow, and in Hampden Wellings hung with the leading group until the last lap inishing ifth in a season’s best 15:14.99 behind Mercy Cherono, Janet Kisa, Pavey and Margaret Wangari Muriuki.

It was a great run, but you sensed Wellings wanted more.

“I’m driven, I’m aggressive, I’m competitive,” Wellings self-assessed after the race.

“I’m happy with (the run) – but I wanted a medal.”

Two athletes, doing things their own way by choice or necessity, and still able to produce outstanding performances: you’ve got to salute that.

Michael, Eloise do it their way 42 A Column By Len Johnson

20 SECONDS OF BOLT BEATS 20 MINUTES SUNSHINE

Is 20 seconds of Usain Bolt enough to make a major athletics event a success?

In the case of the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, you would have to say the answer is a resounding ‘yes’.

The world’s greatest sprinter took a little less than 20 seconds to anchor the Jamaica men’s 4×100 metres relay to heat and inal victories. But that was enough to keep faith with Games’ organisers, to dance and clown around with admiring fans, to indulge the luckiest of those fans (and, later, some media and many volunteers in the mixed zone) with ‘selies’.

Wisely, the timetable had been tweaked to guarantee two Bolt appearances. Instead of heat and inal of the realy being on the same program, they were split, the heats on Friday, 1 August, the inal the next day.

Had he run the individual sprints as well, Bolt would have been in action on ive of the seven days in Glasgow. As most sessions were sell-outs, this would have had no impact on the attendance, but no doubt would have swelled the television audiences signiicantly.

20 seconds of bolt beats 20 minutes sunshine 43 A Column By Len Johnson

Bolt had already indicated his drawing power with his arrival in the Games’ host city. It is a moot point whether his appearance or the many appearances of the Queen attracted greater attention. At a bizarre press conference, Bolt was asked a series of non-athletic questions among them some on the crisis in Gaza and others on the imminent Scottish independence referendum.

Indeed, until Bolt appeared on the Hampden Park track, there were still cynics believing that he had turned up just to be an ambassador for the event and would not actually run at all. All over town were billboards for one of the oficial sponsors with images of three superstars – Bolt, Mo Farah and Christine Ohuruogu.

Farah had already pulled out, citing illness publically and, no doubt, the presence of strong Kenyan and Ugandan opposition privately; Ohuruogu, like Bolt, would do relay duty only and, also like Bolt, had yet to set foot on the track (again, like Bolt, she eventually ran both heat and inal for the bronze medal England women’s 4×400).

Rain tumbled down in varying degrees for almost the entire inal session of the athletics. Unsighted as the sun was for almost the entire day, few would have swapped the 20 seconds of Bolt for 20 minutes of sunshine. As the song goes, you can bet your bottom dollar that the sun comes up tomorrow, but there is no guarantee Usain Bolt will ever return to Glasgow.

Bolt was kept out of the individual sprints by the foot injury that put him out of the Jamaican championships. Injury almost put him out of the relay inal, too: not his, but the hamstring strain suffered by Kimmari Roach while running the irst leg of the heat. No doubt realising that he would be forever labelled as the man who stopped Bolt from running the Commonwealth Game if he did not complete his leg, Roach somehow got to the changeover whereupon Julian Forte, Nickel Ashmeade and Bolt did the rest.

Individual 100 gold medallist Kemar Bailey-Cole and Jason Livermore came in for the i - nal, with Bolt bringing the baton home in a Games record 37.58 seconds, fastest in the world this year.

The great man now moves on to a beach sprint in Rio followed by races over 200 metres in Warsaw on 23 August and Zurich on 28 August. His target is his own world record 19.19, if not in either of those two races, then in the future.

Telling BBC Radio 5 Live in Glasgow he had “done enough” in the 100, Bolt added: “I love the 200 and I want to do something for myself. I’ve said I want to run sub-19. That’s one of my biggest goals and my biggest dreams, so I deinitely going to be training hard and seeing what I can do.”

20 seconds of bolt beats 20 minutes sunshine 44 A Column By Len Johnson

Even running only a relay, Bolt dominates any event in which he takes part. Thirty years ago, when Carl Lewis attained similar status, there was argument as to whether that was a good or bad thing for the sport.

Bolt’s global impact has also been discussed in such terms but, overwhelmingly, the conclusion seems to have been reached that Usain St Leo Bolt is a good thing for athletics.

Whatever the case, there is no doubt his appearance in Glasgow had an impact way beyond the 20 seconds it took to get his running done.

20 seconds of bolt beats 20 minutes sunshine 45 A Column By Len Johnson

ROWE EQUAL TO DOUBELL, NOT DOUBELL’S EQUAL

A friend, whose views I always respect, mentioned recently that he was only “sort of happy” that Alex Rowe had equalled Ralph Doubell’s Australian record for 800 metres.

Like me, my friend was delighted that an Australian had inally run as fast as Doubell did in that glorious run in Mexico City which yielded both an Olympic gold medal and an equal world record. The medal lasts forever, the world record lasted almost ive years but, as its life-span stretched into a ifth decade, it seemed the Australian record would live forever.

It still might, of course, for Rowe has only equalled the record, not broken it. Given that, however much it seems inevitable now, further improvement is not guaranteed, this prompts the intriguing thought: could Doubell’s record last 50 years. Or even longer, albeit now as a shared one.

What my friend had in mind was the difference in quality between the time-equal performances. Doubell’s 1:44.40 won him an Olympic title, Rowe’s saw him inish seventh in the Monaco Diamond League in a race in which no fewer than ive men ran 1:42.

Rowe equal to Doubell, not Doubell’s equal 46 A Column By Len Johnson

As you may recall, I have some sympathy for this argument. Last year I devoted a column to the proposition (advanced by another friend) that records should only go to those winning races.

Without endorsing the idea, I went through the Australian record list, revising it to recognise only winning performances. There was surprisingly little change. Of what change there was, some merely saw the record revised rather than change hands.

The column still provoked passionate reactions. One coach messaged that I had written many good columns (praise he had never communicated in the past, strangely enough), but this was not one of them.

Now, it is time to declare my hand. A record is just that, a statistic, a measuring tool which measures quantity. How fast? How high? How far? As such, it is an objective measure. Va- garies such as wind, conditions in general and altitude aside, records form as reliable a basis as we have for comparing performances across different countries, continents and eras.

Quality of performance is another matter altogether: an entirely more subjective affair. We can say one athlete has equalled, or bettered, another athlete when he or she equals or betters their performance. That is just comparing numbers.

It is manifestly not the same to say one athlete is the equal of another just because they have produced an equal, or superior, best performance. Many athletes have run faster than Emil Zatopek or Lasse Viren, or Mo Farah, for that matter: few of them possess an equal set of achievements.

Then there is the old records versus medals argument. A preponderance of either can make up for a lack of the other – hence Ron Clarke is one of the all-time greats despite never winning an Olympic gold medal; Mo Farah likewise despite never (yet) setting a world record.

Generally, though, medals trump records. In the column already referred to, I recalled an interview with Brendan Foster in which the great Great Britain runner gave a pithy sum- mation of an athlete who had recently run faster than him over 10,000 metres, but he clearly did not rate as his superior.

Foster’s expurgated retort went: “I mean, (irst name withheld) [copulatory expletive delted], (surname withheld)!”

Enough said (or withheld).

Rowe equal to Doubell, not Doubell’s equal 47 A Column By Len Johnson

Ralph Doubell still sits atop our list of great Australian half-milers, as he should. His was a wonderful performance from an athlete who produced world-class performances consistently from 1967 (when he was World University Games champion, a more prestigious title then that now) until 1970.

Three times Doubell ranked in Track & Fields News’s top 10 for 800 – ninth in 1967, when he beat the No.1 ranked runner to win the universities title), irst in 1968, the year he won the Olympics, and sixth in 1969.

Sure it is a tougher world these days, but Alex Rowe has done none of these things (though he may yet do all of them). He has equalled Doubell’s time, but he would be the irst to agree he is not Doubell’s equal.

Rowe equal to Doubell, not Doubell’s equal 48 A Column By Len Johnson

MOROCCO BOUND

Like Webster’s Dictionary, the Continental Cup is Morocco-bound. Bound for Marrakech, to be speciic.

Back in the day when books were hand-stitched and bound, Moroccan leather was prized for its pliability. It was the material of choice for prestigious reference books. So when Bob Hope and Bing Crosby found themselves shipwrecked and thrown up on a North African beach, they hitched a ride on a passing camel.

“Like Webster’s Dictionary, we’re Morocco-bound,” they chorused as they began another “Road To...-” adventure.

Years later Graham Nash wrote Marrakesh Express, which became a hit for Crosby, Stills and Nash. Then, as in Hope and Crosby’s heyday and still today, there was something exotic about Marrakech, about Morocco in general.

All of which makes the city a good it for the Continental Cup, which must surely qualify as the IAAF’s most exotic competition.

Morocco bound 49 A Column By Len Johnson

The Continental Cup grew out of the World Cup which, although it was the forerunner of the World Championships, was based, not on individual competition, but on a bastardised version of the team-based European Cup.

The IAAF, under its then president Adriaan Paulen, wanted to move to a world championships in the mid-1970s. Instead of going in one jump, however, it was decided to stage the World Cup as an interim competition, which the succeeding president, Primo Nebiolo did.

The interim lasted just six years – from the irst World Cup in 1977 to the irst world championships in 1983 – but the interim measure remained in place. The World Cup joined the long list of interim measures that found a permanent place in the calendar.

The European Cup was a national team competition. The IAAF blended that concept into its own continental area-based structure to create a world team competition. America competed by right, as did the top two teams from the European Cup. Then there were teams representing Africa, the Americas, Asia, (the rest of) Europe and Oceania. One athlete per team competed in the full range of events (other than road and multis).

The competition was gender-based with separate men’s and women’s cups.

From 2010, the format was changed. The chronically uncompetitive Asia and Oceania teams were merged and the national teams dropped. The Continental Cup is contested by teams from Africa, Americas, Asia / Paciic and Europe, with two representatives per event instead of one. It is also a combined men’s and women’s competition.

I must confess the World / Continental Cup was and is one of my favourite events. The reason is partly personal – I worked for the Local Organising Committee in Canberra in 1985, and partly because I like the team format.

My view is not universally shared. It is dificult to ind athletes willing to add an extra event into a long season – this year’s Cup will be staged on 13–14 September and those who advocate team-based competition as a potential panacea for all that is wrong in athletics should take a look at the problems of promoting the Cup.

Despite all that, the Cup has delivered. The irst edition, in Dusseldorf in 1977, offered an epic clash at 800 metre between Olympic champion Alberto Juantorena and Mike Boit, a clash we had been denied in Montreal a year earlier by the African boycott.

There was an equally epic race between Irena Szewinska and Marita Koch in the women’s 400 metres and a change of generations in the men’s 1500 metres as a brash, young Steve Ovett stormed away from Olympic champion John Walker on the inal bend. The Cup was televised, and you can ind many of these events on the net.

Morocco bound 50 A Column By Len Johnson

The Continental Cup does offer something different, and this year it will offer it somewhere different. You could do worse than hitch a ride on a passing camel bound for Morocco and Marrakech.

A Seat for Pam Turney

One thing you didn’t see Pam Turney doing too often was sitting down.

Turney, who died almost exactly a year ago at the age of 82, was pretty well always on the move as she coached, mentored, administered and lived life to the full.

Notwithstanding all that, Turney has been remembered with a seat on Melbourne’s famous Tan Track. Originally built for horses, the ‘Tan’ has been well and truly taken over by runners, joggers and walkers on two legs. Pam Turney had a word for most of the latter group and no doubt would have had a wise word to the horses, too, had she been around at the time.

The memorial seat will be situated near the corner of Government House Drive and Linlithgow Avenue, where Turney’s squad gathered regularly for training. It will be quite close to the statue of Australian WW I and II military leader Sir Thomas Blamey.

A strong, uncompromising leader and Blamey as well, you might say.

Morocco bound 51 A Column By Len Johnson

ASBEL KIPROP

For the most part of his career, Asbel Kiprop has been predictably unpredictable, consistently inconsistent. When he wins, it is impossible to imagine anyone beating him; when he loses, it is often hard to believe that everyone else in the race did not.

At just 25 years of age, Kiprop has won one Olympic gold medal in the 1500 metres and two world championships. By the time you read this, he may have added the Diamond League inal in Brussels to his accolades (though his record in late-season races suggests he may equally well have not).

Australian fans have had a irst-hand glimpse of the mercurial side of Kiprop. He did not race here until 2010, by which stage he was already an Olympic champion and had inished fourth in two world championship inals. Oh, and he was yet to turn 21.

But it was not until his third visit in 2012 that Kiprop actually won a race on Australian soil. True to his predictable unpredictability, this win was over 800 metres rather than his lagship 1500. Not that he is all that shabby at two laps, mind you – Kiprop has a personal best of 1:43.15 at the shorter distance and defeated Nijel Amos to win at this year’s Par- is Diamond League meeting.

Asbel Kiprop 52 A Column By Len Johnson

In three tries, however, Kiprop has not won over 1500 in Australia. Jeff Riseley has three wins over Kiprop – all of them in Melbourne over 1500; Nick Willis and Ayanleh Suleiman have just one more with four. Indeed, according to the statistics site All-Athletics, the only man with a substantial career advantage over Kiprop is Kenyan rival Silas Kiplagat, who leads 13–10 over 23 races.

Kiprop emerged as a 17-year-old in winning the junior race at the world cross-country championships in Mombasa. True to form, he was not the favourite, but he surged clear over the last kilometre to defeat Vincent Chepkok, Matthew Kisorio and Leonard Komon in an early display of his rare talent.

Six months later, having turned 18 in the interim, Kiprop made an outrageous attempt to steal the world championships 1500 metres. Taking off 600 metres into the inal in Osaka, Kiprop went from almost-last to irst within 100 metres. He held the lead all the way into the inal straight before Bernard Lagat, defending champion Rashid Ramzi and Shedrack Korir edged past.

At the Olympics a year later in Beijing, Kiprop again tried to win from the front, but this time it was Ramzi who edged him at the line, 3:32.94 to 3:33.11.

That result would ultimately be overturned by a positive drug test, but it would take 18 months so Kiprop went to the following year’s world championships still without a major medal to his name. Having twice tried and twice failed to win from the front, he now showed his bizarre side by languishing at the back.

Not surprisingly, Kiprop was caught out of position when the real racing began after a muddling irst 800 metres. He lashed home, running his last 300 metres as fast as anyone else in the race but the winner – Yousef Kamel of Bahrain – but again he was one place out of the medals.

Kiprop had arrived in Berlin undefeated over 1500 metres and the mile that year, with wins in Hengelo, Rome and the Kenyan championships as well as the prestigious Bower- man mile at the Prefontaine Classic.

Over recent years, Kiprop’s unpredictability has moderated considerably, though he still has his races where you are left muttering: “What was that.” Mostly, this has concerned his for- ays into 800 which have produced great runs, such as his Paris DL win, and shockers alike.

At 1500, though, Kiprop has edged towards a more consistent level of performance beit - ting an athlete of his ability. A narrow, but decisive, win over Kiplagat brought him his irst world title in Daegu. Returning to Europe, he lowered his ‘pb’ to 3:30.46 in Rieti.

Asbel Kiprop 53 A Column By Len Johnson

Kiprop went sub-3:30 in the London Olympic year, running 3:28.88 in Monaco, but his Games went haywire when a hamstring injury restricted him to 12th in the Olympic inal. He bounced back in 2013, reducing his best to 3:27.72, again in Monaco and retaining his world title with a commanding performance in Moscow.

This year began with another sub-3:30, this time in Doha, which prompted Kiprop to set a target of breaking the world record in Monaco.

World records, however, are like the spirits in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I. To Glendow- er’s boast that he “can summon spirits from the vasty deep,” Hotspur retorts:

“Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them.”

Kiprop could not “summon up” Hicham El Guerrouj’s world record in Monaco, nor could he even summon up the energy to win. His great rival Kiplagat got the better of him in the last 200 metres and edged past him on the all-time list 3:27.64 to 3:28.45.

By the time you read this, Asbel Kiprop will have had the chance to reverse one of those situations – maybe even both, though the two Kenyans will also face the likes of Sulei- man, Olympic champion Taouik Makhloui, Matt Centrowtiz and Leo Manzano in a typi- cally loaded ield.

Predictably, it is an unpredictable race.

Asbel Kiprop 54 A Column By Len Johnson

JENNY SIMPSON

In 2011, Jenny Simpson was world champion at 1500 metres, but few would have acclaimed her the best in the world.

This year is a non-championship year, but Simpson ends it with a strong claim to being the best female 1500 runner going around right now. About the only link between that and her world championships victory in Daegu is that she has done it with aot l of endurance and a strong inish.

The women’s 1500 metres has not got back to the heady times of earlier years. The top end of the all-time list is dominated by the infamous Ma’s Army – Qu Xunxia’s 3:50.46 at the China National Games in 1993 remains way out of any current runner’s reach. Then follows a group of Eastern Europeans, many of whose performances must be regarded with scepticism in light of what we now know.

In 2011, Simpson’s championship year, no woman broke four minutes. Since then, though, we have seen women again pushing down well under four minutes. Sweden’s Ethiopi - an-born Abeba Aregawi led the way, but others followed including Kenyan pair Hellen Obiri and Faith Kipyegon – and Simpson.

Jenny Simpson 55 A Column By Len Johnson

And just as she has a habit of inishing her races with an unanswerable burst of speed, Simpson has timed her run at a possible number one ranking just right. If it works out that way, few could deny she is a worthy winner.

It was all a little different back in Daegu in 2011. Then, Simpson’s win was helped by a number of factors over which she had little control. Her teammate, Morgan Uceny, fastest in the world that year, was brought down at the bell in a fall which also involved Obiri.

Another favourite, Maryam Jamal, never recovered from a stumble at around the same time. Simpson and Britain’s Hannah England – another big inisher – came from mid-pack to go past Spain’s Natalya Rodriguez up the straight: gold to Simpson, silver to England and Rodriguez hung of for the bronze.

Simpson had run 3:59.90 in 2009 at the Prefontaine Classic, which led LetsRun to cate- gorise her win as “unexpected... not totally shocking.” Noting that several of the world’s best had not been able to produce their best race, the report concluded Simpson’s win had been a “strange and memorable moment in what has... been a championships for the underdog.”

The world championships victory earned Simpson her irst top-10 ranking – but it could not be at number one. She had won the biggest honour, but was not in the top-20 on times and had lost three out of four races to Uceny – the US championships, Monaco (3rd v 5th) and Brussels (1st v 13th). She came in at No.3, behind Uceny and Jamal.

The London Olympics saw Simpson go from total shock to total shocker. She inished last in her semi-inal. “I have no excuses,” she said afterwards. Later, she thought she may have over-trained.

Simpson bounced back in 2013 with a strong defence of her world title in Moscow. Are- gawi was the favourite and, after Simpson had led through the irst two laps, took on the American over the inal lap, bursting to the lead and defying Simpson to run her down. She could not, and it was gold to Aregawi after a sub-59 second inal 400 metres, and silver to Simpson.

This year, Simpson has simply got it right. Overall, her form has been consistent, and consistently good. According to statistics site, All-Athletics, six of Simpson’s all-time top 10 performances have come this year, including her best two and ive of her best eight.

Others have shone, but again Simpson’s timing has been just right. Genzebe Dibaba set indoor world records at 1500 (3:55.17) and 3000 (8:16.60) and a world best at two miles, but has not been such a factor outdoors. Simpson beat her over 1500 at theDN Galan meeting in August.

Jenny Simpson 56 A Column By Len Johnson

Sifan Hassan beat Simpson at the Paris DL, running the year’s fastest time, 3:57.00 to 3:57.22. Earlier, Obiri (3:57.05) beat Aregawi, Faith Kipyegon, Aregawi and Simpson at the Prefontaine DL meeting.

But Simpson has come home strongest, winning the 1500 DL inal at the Zurich meeting by 0.01 over fellow-American Shannon Rowbury as both crashed dramatically to the track. Hassan was fourth, Aregawi eighth and Obiri ninth.

Head-to-head, Simpson is 3–3 with Aregawi in 2014, 2–1 over Obiri and 4–1 over Hassan. She has only raced Kipyegon twice, but is 1–1 against the Kenyan.

So the race for the number one ranking is close. As usual, Simpson in closing fast and we will not know the result until the line.

Jenny Simpson 57 A Column By Len Johnson

ONE THING I’D LIKE TO SEE (BUT PROBABLY WON’T)

One thing I’d love to see in 2015 – but almost certainly will not, is Mo Farah and Galen Rupp taking on all-comers at the world cross-country championships.

It is something their coach, Alberto Salazar, famously did, inishing second in 1982 and fourth a year later, In fact, it is something that an earlier version of Mo Farah has already done. The reigning world and Olympic champion at 5000 and 10,000 metres inished 11th in Mombasa in 2007 and 20th in Bydgoszcz three years after that, but you would be well advised to keep food and drink handy if you are waiting for him to compete again.

A pity really, because Mo Farah now is a much, much better athlete than the one who went round back then. And even though the world cross-country is not the race it once was, it remains one of the toughest races in the world to win. It is also a race won by many of the athletes with whom Farah can rightly be compared as a great all-round distance runner — Carlos Lopes, Kenenisa Bekele and Paul Tergat are just three to have excelled at track, cross-country and road.

One thing I’d like to see (but probably won’t) 58 A Column By Len Johnson

Galen Rupp, too, could follow in a long tradition of American runners to have taken on the world’s best from a variety of distances over the country. Craig Virgin won the race twice; his near-contemporary Pat Porter was a ixture among the top 10 for a number of years; the US men’s – and women’s – teams regularly inished among the medals.

Salazar was among that generation of US runners. His second place, in Rome in 1982, just four seconds behind Mohammed Kedir (and eight places ahead of Rob de Castella) was the closest he came to winning, but his fourth in Gateshead a year later remains one of my favourite world cross-country races.

Well into the last lap, six runners remained in contention – Lopes, Salazar, Spain’s Anto- nio Prieto, de Castella and not one, but two, ‘unknown’ Africans, Bekele Debele of Ethiopia and Some Muge of Kenya.

The two unknowns inished irst (Debele) and third (Muge), with Lopes splitting them and all three running 36:52 for the 12km. Salazar was a second behind in fourth place, Prieto three behind him and de Castella another four seconds back in sixth. Eight seconds covered the irst six, 25 the irst 10, and the irst 34 inished within a minute.

Muge won Kenya’s irst individual world cross-country medal and led his team to third place, two points ahead of Australia. Great days indeed.

A couple of weeks later, de Castella out-sprinted Lopes to win the Rotterdam marathon, which had been billed as a much-hyped match race between the Australian and Salazar, who fell back around 37km to inish ifth.

Next year is world cross-country year, the event set down to visit China for the irst time, in Guiyang on 28 March. It would be great to see Farah and Rupp there trying to do what their coach so gallantly failed to achieve 30 or more years ago. It would be equally great to see Europe and the rest of the world there, too, supporting the likes of theUS A, Aus- tralia and a handful of other irst world countries in keeping it a true world event.

While on the theme of things I would like to see, the fact that we are on the eve of the northern hemisphere marathon season is both a cause for celebration and lament.

Celebration, because we are certain to see some great racing, beginning with Berlin on Sunday week (28 September) and continuing through Frankfurt, Chicago, New York, Fukuoka and several others beside. Of most interest may be Kenenisa Bekele’s second -at tempt at the 42.195km distance in Chicago (unless Denis Kimetto upstages him with a world record in Berlin irst).

Lament, though, because after almost a decade of the World Marathon Majors we still do not have a credible mechanism for deciding the best marathoners in the world.

One thing I’d like to see (but probably won’t) 59 A Column By Len Johnson

The Olympic marathons remain the two pre-eminent races; the world championships are next, for depth, certainly, and, for mine, at the sharp end, too. But the WMM races continue to go their separate ways with only London seemingly having the will, and the budget, to put together a deep ield. Let’s not even talk about the decision to add Tokyo to the WMM calendar while Fukuoka, Beppu and Lake Biwa remain more credible races.

A marathon after which most of us could agree the winners were best in the world – now that’s something I’d like to see, too (but probably won’t).

One thing I’d like to see (but probably won’t) 60 A Column By Len Johnson

NOW IS THE WINTER OF OUR CONTENT RUINED

Richard III was not talking about the weather when Shakespeare had him declaim: “Now is the winter of our discontent, Made glorious summer by this son of York.”

And if, to borrow another Shakespearian phrase, I am to shoot “a fellow of the self-same light,” in my case bemoaning the end of winter, I am likewise not talking about the weather.

Winter is the favourite season of few, loving it demands a degree of masochism most of us neither possess, nor covet. Skiers and other winter sports aicionados may be the exceptions that prove the rule.

So, I am not talking about the end of winter per se. Rather, I am talking about the end of the winter season which came in Victoria last weekend with the Tan Relays.

In a grand celebration, over 1100 runners representing almost 300 teams took part in the annual relay around the famous track encircling Melbourne’s Botanic Gardens. Men, women, seniors, juniors and veterans – all, or most, of them happy to dodge round the thou- sands more joggers, walkers, strollers, walkers with strollers, runners, walkers or strollers with dogs on the lead etc, etc who also use the Tan on Saturday mornings.

Now is the winter of our content ruined 61 A Column By Len Johnson

A few obstacles to get around? It just adds to the fun.

We hear heaps about what is wrong with athletics these days, but I reckon the Tan Relays represents a lot about what is right. And there has to be much right when so many runners are celebrating the end of the winter season with a relay that takes in an eyeballs-out lap of Melbourne’s most popular running circuit.

The Tan Relays are such a good idea that it seems it must have been going forever. Like the 16km, or 10ml, cross-country, it must surely be over 100 years old. In fact, it is more like 10, the brain-child of Phil Bowes, when he was convenor of the Athletics Victoria winter committee. He thought the winter season should end with a relay, and what better than a relay around the famous Tan track.

Many assume the Tan takes its name from the Gardens the track encircles. Not so; the name comes from the tan bark surface of a long-gone riding track. In those days,

Melbourne’s self-ordained aristocracy copied their social betters back in the Old Country by going horse-riding as a form of recreation. There were stables in the side-streets adjoining the Domain where the well-heeled could quarter their horses, the less well-off hire them.

Reminders of those days remain with the HQ of the Victorian Mounted Police on the South Melbourne side of St Kilda Road adjacent to the Tan. When I started running the Tan back in the 1970s it was still common to encounter mounted police exercising their horses.

Even earlier, when the likes of Percy Cerutty had his athletes training around the Gardens, runners were slowed by the shifting surface, a far cry from today’s compacted gravel.

Runners have always used the Tan as a training track. In my experience it is unique in offering a varied running experience so close to the centre of a major city – mostly dirt, a steep hill on asphalt up one side, grassed areas in the adjoining Domain, hilly circuits on both grass and gravel.

Other cities offer something comparable, but few tick as many boxes as does the Tan. London’s Hyde Park, latter and not quite as accessible from the middle of town.

Sydney’s Centennial Park goes close, too, but lacks one single coherent circuit. Paris has the Luxembourg Gardens, but it is a more formal park, not as far round and almost com- pletely lat.

Closest in my experience is Vancouver’s Stanley Park, which has an encircling sea-wall, plenty of interior tracks (including a rainforest section) and a similar variety of terrain (except, again, hills). I have not run in New York’s Central Park (it remains an unfulilled priority).

Now is the winter of our content ruined 62 A Column By Len Johnson

But the Tan will do for now. When I was running at my best, I worked in Melbourne’s CBD and the accessibility of the Tan, and the other parks which encircle the inner city, made it the ideal place to train.

The Tan also entered into international renown when an article on the emerging Noah Ng- eny in France’s prestigious sporting daily L’Equipe attributed him with just two records — the world junior record for 1500 metres and the record for one lap of Melbourne’s Jardins Botaniques.

Most of the famous runners who have come to Melbourne have run a lap of the Tan. I even saw Carl Lewis running there once.

Ngeny held the course record. It then passed to William Chirchir, I believe, and currently rests with Craig Mottram at 10:12. The fastest time by a woman is still believed to be Kate Richardson (Anderson) at 11:55.

Of course, this is all a bit inexact. Many great runners have never run a timed, all-out lap when in good shape. Steve Ovett ran two laps at a pace most runners, even the elite, struggle to match for one. Like the Tan relays, though, it is mostly good fun.

No disrespect to W.Shakespeare, but with the Tan relays and the end of another cross-country season, the winter of our content is made inglorious summer.

Now is the winter of our content ruined 63 A Column By Len Johnson

DENNIS KIMETTO — HOW FAR CAN HE GO?

Dennis Kimetto is the new world record holder in the marathon.

He is not to be confused with Dennis Cometti, the silky-voiced Australian Rules football television caller other than in this one thing – Dennis Kimetto runs as smoothly and fe- licitously as his near-namesake coins a phrase.

Cometti gets to rehearse some of his apparently spontaneous on-air quips, just as Kimet- to runs countless kilometres in training to give the impression that world record pace is being effortlessly attained.

Both men were at their peak last weekend. Early in the AFL grand inal, a Hawthorn player lew audaciously for a high mark. Guessing intuitively (and, it turned out, correct- ly), Cometti called “Cyril Rioli was it – unidentiied lying object, anyway.” A gem, even by Cometti’s high standards.

Dennis Kimetto fashioned his triumph a little more slowly — two hours two minutes 57 seconds, in fact, the time it took him to cover Berlin’s 42.195 kilometers fora new world record.

Dennis Kimetto — How far can he go? 64 A Column By Len Johnson

Like his similarly named Australian Rules counterpart, Kimetto looks smoother the more pressure he inds himself under. Just past the 33km mark of the race, Geoffrey Kamworor fell back, leaving Kimetto and Emmanuel Mutai to ight it out. For the next ive kilometres, the pace varied between 2:52 and 3:00 per kilometre. With it, some of the 45–second cushion the pair had over world record pace started to evaporate. Race callers Tim Hutchings and Stuart Storey speculated anxiously about the world record’s slipping away. Watching from my lounge-room, I thought Kimetto was looking a little tight through the shoulders; perhaps the strain was beginning to show Once Kimetto took over at 38km, however, there was no doubt Wilson Kipsang’s record was toast. And the strangest thing, the faster he ran, the smoother he looked. Grace under pressure, indeed.

Of course, there may have been other reasons Kimetto looked a little ragged at 35km. The pace from 30 to 35, for one – he split 14:09 for those ive kilometres, the fastest of the race; Mutai was 14:11. No wonder Kamworor dropped back. Two years ago, Kimetto ran to the line in Berlin a second behind Geoffrey Mutai in 2:04:16 as we wondered whether the two training partners were really racing each other. Last year, Kimetto won Chicago in 2:03:45, just 22 seconds slower than the world record Kipsang had recently set in Berlin.

Now, Kimetto has taken something off both men. The world record that belonged to Kipsang now rests with Kimetto and, in so doing, he has re-aligned the world record with the fastest marathon ever run – beating G.Mutai’s 2:03:02 from Boston in 2011. Emmanuel Mutai battled it out till the end and was rewarded with 2:03:13, just 16 sec - onds behind Kimetto and also under the previous fastest time on a record-eligible course. His consistency is awesome. Kimetto believes he can go faster, and he almost certainly can — given Berlin-like conditions. The race provided its usual sharp record focus, with a V-shaped phalanx of pacemakers leading the way and continuing through 30km. And even for Berlin, last Sunday was a special day – cool at the start, no wind and the sun’s appearance did not come early enough to impact on the elite runners.

Of greater interest, to this observer anyway, was Kimetto’s post-race statement that over the enxt two years he wants to help Kenya regain the world championship and Olym- pic marathon titles (both currently held by Uganda’s Stephen Kiprotich). He said that at an Athletics Kenya welcome home in Nairobi, so perhaps we would not want to put the house on its happening yet.

Dennis Kimetto — How far can he go? 65 A Column By Len Johnson

SURPRISES THE GO IN CHICAGO

Eliud Kipchoge out-leaned Hicham El Guerrouj by inches to win the 5000 metres at the Paris 2003 world championships.

It is dificult to say who looks more surprised in the inish picture. Is it 18-year-old Kipchoge at inishing four hundredths of a second ahead of world record holder for the mile and 1500 metres, Hicham El Guerrouj. Or is it the aforesaid El Guerrouj at inishing 0.04 behind the relatively unknown teenager in 12:52.83.

Perhaps, it is the man fully obscured by the irst two. That would be Kenenisa Bekele, a step behind in 12:53.12, just four seconds quicker than he had run for the second half of the 10,000 metres a few days earlier in the championships.

Kipchoge and Bekele will meet again in the Chicago marathon early on Monday morning, Melbourne time (Sunday morning, Chicago time). It would be no surprise if either man won; indeed, it would be something of a major surprise if one of them did not; they stand out from the rest of the ield.

They don’t mind a surprise at the Chicago marathon. Thirty years ago, Steve Jones stunned Olympic champion Carlos Lopes and world record holder Robert de Castella with a late- race move to win in a new world record 2:08:05.

Surprises the go in Chicago 66 A Column By Len Johnson

A year later in 1985, Jones pulled another surprise. This time he ran away from the start leaving the pacemaker (just one them in those days, and not yet a common feature of marathons) struggling in his wake as he blasted through the irst half of the race in 61:43. Jones inevitably slowed, inishing in 2:07:13, just a second outside the new world record Lopes had established in Rotterdam earlier in the year.

In 2010, Sammy Wanjiru looked gone for all money as he dropped back behind Tsegay Kebede late in the race but, to the surprise of all, he dug deep, marshalled his reserves and came storming past the Ethiopian to a record one of his greatest wins.

In the women’s race three years earlier, Romania’s Adriana Pirtea was celebrating her apparent victory as she came down one side of the inishing chute, oblivious to the fact that Berhane Adere was closing fast on the extreme outside of the chute to pip her at the line.

The other thing that will surprise about Sunday’s race is if the leaders go through half- way in anything much slower than Steve Jones’ once-shocking 61:43.

Jones’ run in 1985 was a throw-back to the days of Ron Hill, Derek Clayton, Shigeru So, and others, when marathoners anxious to see how fast they could go went out hard and hung on. This time, something under 62 minutes is likely to be the pace as the elite con- tenders take aim at Dennis Kimetto’s course record 2:03:45.

Bekele and Kipchoge are peas in a pod, elite track runners both who have moved up to the marathon late in their careers. Learning from Paul Tergat and Haile Gebrselassie, maybe, each has had a more gradual transition to the 42.195km on the roads.

Bekele has run just one marathon, and in the (relatively) subdued venue of Paris earlier this year, rather than jumping straight into London or Berlin. He won Paris impressively in 2:05:04 and also has a Great North Run victory last year over Mo Farah and Gebrselas- sie to his credit and a 10km road win over Wilson Kipsang.

Kipchoge made the step across a year earlier, winning in Hamburg in 2:05:30 before inishing second to Kipsang in last year’s Berlin race in 2:04:05 and then winning in Rotterdam this year in 2:05:00. Statistically, and by experience, he seems to have an edge over Bekele but, Paris 2003 notwithstanding, Bekele is the better all-round runner.

And, of course, if the lesson of 2003 means anything, it is that someone may bob up and beat them both. Despite the presence of 2:04 men Tadese Tola and Bernard Koech, and 2:05 performers Dickson Chumba and Sammy Kitwara, that does not seem likely.

Surprises the go in Chicago 67 A Column By Len Johnson

Footnote: Robert de Castella’s reaction to his 1984 and (even more so) 1985 losses to Steve Jones had repercussions for those who ran with him back in Canberra’s Stromlo Forest. Jones ran fewer miles than the Australian, but ran them faster, so ‘Deek’ upped his tempo considerably, leaving his poor training group struggling in his wake.

Fortunately, he soon settled down and in the irst part of 1986 ran a personal best for 5000 metres, inished a strong 14th in the world cross-country and then won the Boston marathon in 2:07:51, which remains the Australian record.

Surprises the go in Chicago 68 A Column By Len Johnson

HERE COMES BILLY MILLS

The most unexpected of many coincidences and surprises surrounding the launch of The Landy Era back in 2009 was the appearance of Billy Mills.

My book had already enjoyed the beneit of several twists of good fate, chiely in being ready for launch at the John Landy Lunch, the traditional prelude to Melbourne’s annual IAAF World Challenge meeting. What more appropriate venue could there be than a function honouring the main protagonist.

John Landy was there, as was Ron Clarke, who had done so much to help the project come to fruition.

Then, in total coincidence No.1, former mile great Jim Ryun contacted Clarke a few days before the lunch. He was travelling along Australia’s eastern seaboard on a cruise ship (Ryun, a former US Congressman in addition to his running exploits, was a guest motiva- tional speaker). Was there any way they could catch up, he asked.

Well, I’ll be in Melbourne for a book launch, Clarke replied, and in total coincidence No.2, it turned out that on the day of the Landy lunch the ship would be at dock in Melbourne.

Here comes Billy Mills 69 A Column By Len Johnson

Ryun asked if he could bring a friend along with him. In total coincidence No.3, that friend turned out to be Billy Mills, the Tokyo Olympic 10,000 metres gold medallist.

As big a surprise as Mills’ appearance was, his unannounced attendance at the Landy lunch was merely the second greatest shock he had given Ron Clarke. The bigger one came 50 years ago this week – 14 October, 1964 – when he came out of the ground to sprint past Clarke and Mohamed Gammoudi to his famous Olympic victory.

It is one of the most famous races in Olympic history. Writing in 1972, Track & Field News magazine co-founder Cordner Nelson nominated it as “the most exciting race I’ve ever seen” in a 40-year career which included (to that stage) six Olympic Games.

Nelson had the added buzz that it was an American athlete pulling off a surprise win, the irst American gold medal in Olympic 5000 / 10,000 ever and irst of any colour since Los Angeles in 1932 (Horace Ashenfelter won the steeple in Helsinki in 1952).

To most fans, even Americans, it was a shock victory, too. The precocious teenager, Gerry Lindgren, was the favoured one, a folk hero after his defeat of the Soviet distance runners in the annual USA-USSR match earlier that year. But Lindgren, perhaps suffering from the lingering effects of an ankle injury, was one of the many better-known chances burned off by Clarke’s early surges.

Additionally, Mills had irst qualiied for the team in the marathon, and it was assumed that might be his higher priority.

Contrary to many stories, however, Ron Clarke did know who Billy Mills was. Pat Clohessy, then attending the University of Houston, had travelled to several races with Mills, including the famous Sao Silvestre New Year’s Eve race in Sao Paulo. Mills several times expressed his frustration at his inconsistent form with Clohessy advising him to modify his training along the lines he had observed, and adopted, while travelling with Arthur Lydiard’s New Zealand athletes.

Another Kiwi, historian, athlete and writer Roger Robinson, this week looked back at the 1964 Olympic 10,000 for Running Times. It’s well worth a read.

The Tokyo Games were also shown pretty much live on Australian television. I remember watching the 10,000 metres with Channel Seven’s Ron Casey doing the commentary. We were all barracking for Clarke, who had broken the world record in Melbourne in the previous year’s Zatopek 10,000.

Here comes Billy Mills 70 A Column By Len Johnson

My recollection, however, is that he was not the overwhelming favourite. Pyotr Bolotnikov, whose record Clarke had broken by only a couple of seconds, was in the race and was the defending champion. Murray Halberg of New Zealand, the Rome Olympic 5000 champion, had moved up in distance and was a big threat.

Clarke dropped them all in the irst half of the race with a series of alternating fast and (relatively) slower laps. Mills, Gammoudi and Mamo Wolde of Ethiopia were the only ones who could hang on. The American took a turn in the lead at the half-way point – reached in 14:04.6, world record pace.

Wolde dropped and Mills looked at times as if he was hanging on, but he shared the lead with Clarke at the bell, Gammoudi at their heels.

The last few laps saw the leaders lapping slower runners. Some moved out, others stayed resolutely put. More like a dash for a peak-hour train, than a race, Clarke later described it. You can watch it here.

Clarke and Mills raced side-by-side around the penultimate bend, rapidly closing on a slower runner. Clarke, on the inside, tapped Mills on the arm a couple of times trying to get him to move out. When he did not, the Australian forced his way through, Mills veer- ing out almost into the third lane.

No sooner had the two settled back into their running than Gammoudi put an arm on both and forced his way through, sprinting to a 5–6 metre lead at the 200. Clarke closed the gap, but 50 metres from the line it was apparent he could not catch the Tunisian.

Mills, who had picked his own way through the lapped runners, now came with an unanswerable sprint, arms pumping, knees lifting high. He swept past Clarke, then Gammoudi in a memorable end to a memorable race.

Mills ran sub-60 for the inal lap, Gammoudi just under and Clarke just over 61 seconds. Mills’ 28:24.4 was an Olympic record and only 8.8 seconds slower than Clarke’s world record. In a itting post-script to the chaotic inal lap a spent Clarke was jostled again by a group of lapped runners as he pulled up, hands on knees.

I have witnessed some great championship 10,000s – Haile Gebrselassie and Paul Ter- gat’s two epic Olympic duels; Kenenisa Bekele in 2004 and 2008; Lasse Viren in Munich and Montreal. More recently was Ibrahim Jeilan’s amazing sprint to beat Mo Farah at the Daegu world championships and Mo’s reversal of that result two years later in Moscow.

With its additional elements of a disparate cast of knowns-versus-unknowns, desperately chaotic and dramatic inal lap and close approach to the contemporary world record, the Tokyo Olympic 10,000 still stands comparison with any of them.

Here comes Billy Mills 71 A Column By Len Johnson

WINNING BY HELPING OTHERS

Pat Clohessy knows a thing or two about winning. As an athlete at the University of Houston he was twice NCAA champion over three miles; he was also US national champion over the distance.

As a coach, Clohessy guided Robert de Castella throughout his career from 14-year-old schoolboy to world champion marathoner (and world record holder, twice Commonwealth champion and winner at Boston and Fukuoka).

Yet as he told the audience at the Athletics Australia Award Night in accepting life governorship, crossing the line irst is not Pat Clohessy’s deinition of victory. Instead, as Pat put it, “you win if you help other people.”

By coincidence, I wrote last week about Clohessy’s role in helping Billy Mills to a gold medal in the Tokyo 1964 Olympic 10,000. Ironically, that was at the expense of Ron Clarke, Clohessy’s friend and fellow-Australian.

I can readily think of two further examples of “helping the enemy” concerning ‘Clo’, as Pat is almost universally known. One involves Pat’s great mentor, John Landy, the other his greatest pupil, de Castella. Sellessness, it seems, is a trait that has been passed on both to, and through, Clohessy.

Winning by helping others 72 A Column By Len Johnson

In 1956, John Landy was inveigled to run in the US at the behest of Melbourne Olympic organisers, the hope being that the presence of the sub-four minute miler in America would help redress the damage done to the imminent Melbourne Olympics by the tren- chant criticisms of IOC president Avery Brundage.

Among those Landy raced was young Irish runner Ron Delany, then a student at Villano- va University. Landy broke four minutes in both his US races, though he was sensational- ly beaten by fellow-Australian Jim Bailey in the irst at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Delany was not a factor in either race, inishing 10 seconds behind Landy in the second of them in Fresno. Landy took time out to help Delany with “a bit of a talk... about running.”

Six months later, Delany won the Melbourne Olympic 1500 metres inal. This time it was Landy who was in need of a conidence boost. Hampered by leg injuries in the lead-up (injuries exacerbated by the hard US tracks), he lagged at the back before lying home to inish third.

Delany thanked his parents, his early coaches in Ireland, famed Villanova coach ‘Jumbo’ El- liott and John Landy – “who had inspired me with conidence and by example.”

Thirty-one years later, it was Clohessy pupil de Castella doing the inspiring, this time for his great marathon rival, Alberto Salazar, who was trying to resurrect a career which had been derailed by injury and over-intensity since the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

The two had become friends at the very time their rivalry was hyped to be at its most ierce – the 1983 Rotterdam marathon, billed as a head-to-head showdown between the two fastest in the world.

“We had rooms right next to each other,” Salazar told me in Canberra in 1987. “We ate together in the hotel most days. I was competitive and I still wanted to win the race, but I thought he was a nice guy.”

Salazar had come out to Canberra with his family, to stay with Deek and train with the Australian in Stromlo Forest.

The life governorship for Pat Clohessy – AA’s highest level of life membership – was one of several highlights for distance running at the awards. Michael Shelley took out the male athlete of the year award for his win in the Commonwealth Games marathon; Dick Tel- ford, Shelley’s coach, was named coach of the year; Lisa Ondieki was one of four inductees into Athletics Australia’s Hall of Fame; Commonwealth 1500 gold medallist Angela Bal- lard and Michael Roeger (1500) were para-athletes of the year; and Roeger’s coach, Philo Saunders, was para-athletics coach of the year.

Winning by helping others 73 A Column By Len Johnson

Kim Mickle was named female athlete of the year, (very) narrowly ahead of Sally Pearson and Dani Samuels. Eleanor Patterson was junior athlete of the year and the Common- wealth high jump champion’s coach, David Green, junior coach of the year.

Glasgow team captain Sally Pearson gave a team speech which, as she diplomatically put it, “circumstances” had prevented her from making at the pre-Games team camp. Acknowl- edging the problems then, she asked athletes to look forward to Beijing and Rio.

“Our journey begins in the morning,” Pearson told her teammates.

It has been a great few months for Dick Telford, who just a couple of weeks back was nominated as a general member of the Sport Australia Hall of Fame for his lifelong achieve - ments in coaching, and sports science.

Coincidentally, Dick Telford joined the AIS in Canberra just a few months before Pat Clohessy, Telford as the irst head of the Sports Science unit, Clohessy as distance coach. In a further coincidence, when de Castella moved to the institute in 1982 he worked for Telford as a lab assistant.

Sports science led almost seamlessly into running – former Aussie Rules footballer Telford quickly became one on the nation’s leading veteran performers – and coaching. Among those Dick has guided have been Lisa Ondieki, Andrew Lloyd, Carolyn Schuwalow, Kate Anderson and, now, Shelley.

In accepting his award, Telford commented on his ability to work with athletes whom many others, charitably or otherwise, had categorised as “nutters”.

“Perhaps it says something about me,” Telford joked.

It may do, too, but he also likes to “win by helping”. Both on Melbourne marathon day, and again at the awards ceremony, he was bubbling over about his three women “average age about 40”, who had inished fourth, ninth and 13th in the marathon.

Finally, in noting the passing of a great Australian in Gough Whitlam, let’s not forget that it was his government which commissioned – and adopted — the Bloomield (1973) and Coles (1975) reports recommending the establishment of an Australian Institute of Sport. It took six more years for it to happen — under the Fraser government.

Winning by helping others 74 A Column By Len Johnson

NEW YORK AND CHICAGO

Last week I wrote that winning the New York marathon was a great way to raise your proile, but if you wanted to run your fastest marathon you might be better off considering other races.

That was with New York’s course and road surfaces in mind. Runners pay a price for a course designed to take in all ive of New York’s boroughs – several bridge crossings and many corners, and which inishes in hilly Central Park.

With notable exceptions (Geoffrey Mutai’s race record 2:05:06), performances bear this out. In 2014, a new and unwelcome element was added to the mix. Strong winds – par- ticularly at the start high above the Hudson River on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge linking State Island and Brooklyn – slowed runners for most of the race.

It is Chicago which is known as ‘the Windy City’, but in a trading-places kind of way, on 2 November, 2014, that label more suited New York City.

Actually, the term ‘Windy City’ may be misinterpreted as it applies to Chicago. This can be seen in practical terms in the fact that fast times and the Chicago marathon go pretty well foot-in-sock (seems more appropriate to a marathon race than hand-in-glove).

New York and Chicago 75 A Column By Len Johnson

There is also some doubt as to the meaning of ‘windy’ in Chicago’s oft-cited Windy City nickname.

Indeed, according to statistics compiled by the US National Climatic Data Centre, Chicago’s average annual wind speed of 16.6km / h means the so-called ‘windy city’ is not signii - cantly windier than Boston (20km / h), New York Central Park (15km / h) and Los Angeles (12km / h).

Further, according to Wikipedia (the reference of choice for none other than the Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt), the most likely source of Chicago’s unlattering tag is not the weather but the lagrant hyperbole of some local boosters when Chicago was in competition with another US city, Cincinnati for the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

An 1892 newspaper column noted: ”Chicago has been called the “windy” city, the term being used metaphorically to make out that Chicagoans were braggarts.”

Anyway, let’s not get too long-winded about the origins of the term, the fact is that New York was windy for this year’s marathon. Warnings were posted on the race website advising participants of reduced signage and tent shelter at the start marshalling area.

When the race got away, the wind had blown away the irst mile marker from its position on the bridge. It scarcely mattered. But you didn’t need a weather vane, or a irst mile split, to know which way the wind was blowing. It was basically into runners’ faces for much of the irst 20 miles of the race until the course turned south from the Bronx back into Man - hattan (with apologies to Rodgers and Hart, “We’ll take Manhattan, forget the Bronx and Staten...”).

Unsurprisingly, times were slow. Wilson Kipsang won the men’s race in 2:10:59, the slowest winning time since 1995. Never mind, Kipsang picked up enough points to pip Berlin world record setter Dennis Kimetto by one point in the race to the $500,000 World Mar- athon Majors bonus prize.

Kipsang beat Ethiopia’s Lelisa Desisa by just seven seconds in a sprint over the inal 200 metres (last 400 in 62.5; last full mile in 4:33 – more like 10,000 metres pace). He acknowledged that the bonus situation joined with the weather in dictating a conservative approach.

Mutai, seeking a third win in succession, inished sixth. Lee Troop, running his last competitive marathon, was 25th in 2:25:09, placing him strategically between the irst two women.

New York and Chicago 76 A Column By Len Johnson

Mary Keitany, fourth in the London 2012 Olympic marathon after starting as favourite, returned from the birth of her second child in April last year to beat compatriot Jemima Jelagat by just three seconds in 2:25:07 (Did the wind cry Mary — adding Jimi Hendrix to the list of pointless musical allusions).

The winning margin matched the 2004 race in which Paula Radcliffe edged Susan Chepkemei.

Cautionwas also Keitany’s watchword. “The race was very windy,” she explained, “so I said ‘wait.And I waited’.” Good advice, as it turned out. It was Keitany’s irst win in New York af - ter inishing second twice previously, the latter occasion a painful one as she slowed to 2:23:38after setting out at world record pace for much of the irst half (67:56 at half-way).

Keitanyhas won London twice (2:19:17 in 2011 and 2:18:37 in 2012), so she already has a highproile. So, too, does Kipsang, the immediate past world record holder. Neither need - ed a fast time to further boost their marathon credentials; they can bask in a New York win as another high point on already impressive CVs.

The rest can please themselves.

New York and Chicago 77 A Column By Len Johnson

VIEWS AND REVIEWS

With apologies to Ambrose Bierce and The Devil’s Dictionary, a cynic might deine high performance as follows:

High performance: a level of sporting performance which, if achieved, is to the credit of the high performance management and, if not, is the fault of the individual athlete.

Bierce was an American journalist and writer of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. One of his best-known works was his Devil’s Dictionary, comprised of satirical deinitions of English words which lampoon cant and political double-talk.

High performance is all the go at the moment, with athletics subject to both internal and external reviews around the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

The release of the internal review is imminent, the external one, by the Australian Sports Commission, is due next month. I don’t want to comment on either, but instead make some general observations on high performance from a perspective of covering the sport for more than 20 years.

Athletics has had any number of reviews over the years. One was sub-titled, Change or Die. The sport did neither.

Views and Reviews 78 A Column By Len Johnson

It’s tempting to say that if reviews were medals, we wouldn’t have had as many (reviews, that is). Likewise, if reviews led to more medals.

Generally, reviews are a good thing. A necessary thing, even – sensible organisations review on a regular basis, to establish what they are doing right, what they are doing wrong and what they could do better.

Such reviews might be categorised voluntary, or good, reviews. Bad reviews, by contrast, tend to be forced upon an organisation by perceived shortcomings in performance or management. Both Glasgow reviews fall into that category, or at least had their origin in that context.

Both good and bad reviews, however, tend to focus around performance. Enforced reviews — which are usually, but not always, external – tend to be called for when performance is seen to have fallen short of expectation.

Take swimming at the London Olympics as an example. Swimming was seen to have under-performed and the team culture to have fallen away. The stars of the team were over-indulged, the rest under-serviced. The upshot was a new administration, new board, new head coach and new approach.

Swimming, it was proclaimed, was back on its game in Glasgow. Maybe it was, maybe not. It is hard to gauge things like team culture from any place other than inside the team, but medals don’t seem to bear the argument out.

In Delhi in 2010, Australia’s swimmers won 54 medals – 22 gold, 16 silver and 16 bronze. Four years later, it was 57 – 19 gold, 21 silver and 17 bronze.

Not much change there. Nor is there in the returns from the three major championships book-ended by the two Commonwealth events. At the 2011 worlds swimming won 13 medals (2 / 8 / 3), in London it was 10 (1 / 6 / 3) and at the 2013 worlds, again 13 (3 / 10 / -). The London ‘problems’ may have been solved had two of those silvers been gold.

Going back one more cycle changes the perspective again. The results at world level from 2005 to 2008, inclusive show swimming winning 21 medals at the 2005 world titles, 22 in 2007 (held in Melbourne) and 20 at the Beijing Olympics. Maybe any change is structur- al, as more nations put more resources into swimming.

The most public failure by athletics in Glasgow was the inal breakdown of the relation- ship between head coach Eric Hollingsworth and the team’s number one athlete, Sally Pearson. This split reportedly had its origins at the World Indoor Championships earlier in the year so perhaps better conlict resolution then may have led to a less damaging denouement.

Views and Reviews 79 A Column By Len Johnson

More broadly, athletics was held to have under-performed with 12 medals – eight gold, one silver and three bronze, against 20 in Delhi. (It should be noted that three of the Del- hi medals came in walks, which were not contested in Glasgow.)

The perception of under-performing was heightened by the size of the team. One hun- dred and three were named in the Glasgow team – the largest ever sent away by Australia; 99 competed.

Such judgments are almost entirely based around medals, however, which should not be the sole metric used. Other metrics include personal bests, performing up to entry standard, advancing through the rounds and numbers inishing in the top eight or top 16. Sure- ly the high number of qualiiers is a healthy sign, too.

Let’s consider two hypothetical overall performances by a team of 50. In the irst, all 50 inish between fourth and eighth; in the second, two win gold medals. The medal count would say the latter has performed better; any other measure would judge the former superior.

There are many high performance models around – and I have yet to observe a consistent correlation between the application of any of them and medals won. Some nations opt for a strong head coach, others for a more collegiate and managerial type. Some look for niche events to exploit, others adopt a broader approach. Some obsess about select - ing only those capable of medals, others send all who qualify.

For what it’s worth, my view of the role of high performance is to qualify the maximum number of athletes possible, then to devise and manage a preparation to maximise the chances of those athletes attaining personal best, top 16s, top 8s and medals.

And if recent world championship and Olympic history is any guide, that usually comes down to 3–4 medals. Only a handful of nations can hope to win more.

Views and Reviews 80 A Column By Len Johnson

THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING IS IN THE EATING

The thought that comes immediately to mind with the IAAF’s release of the new qualiication system for the world championships is the adage that the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Just as we cannot judge the quality of the dish until we have eaten it, so we will not know the full impact of the new qualiication system until we see what it produces for Beijing next year and, assuming the IOC is disposed to allow much the same system to operate for the Olympic Games, in Rio the year after.

According to the IAAF media release announcing the adoption of the system, “the key element (is) that the IAAF shall establish the ideal number of athletes to start in each event of the championships and shall ensure that such ideal numbers are met through a qualiication system which, essentially, combines entry standards... and invitations based on rankings.”

It is a work-backwards approach. Decide, say, that 48 is the magic number in the 100 metres, set a standard which, presumably, fewer than that number will achieve (on the traditional three per nation basis, that is), then ill up the ield with the top-ranked athletes.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating 81 A Column By Len Johnson

Presumably, though it is not explicitly stated in the release, the additional athletes can be those who have not achieved the single standard. Less clear is whether they can be en - tered regardless of nationality, or whether the three per nation l imit (plus automatic entry for one, and only one, of defending champion, Diamond League winner, etc) still applies.

Along with the explanation of the new system, the IAAF also released the qualifying standards. After several editions of the championships under the dual A and B-standard sys - tem, the IAAF has returned to a single standard per event. In almost every event, the new standard falls between the A and B-standards for the previous championships in Moscow last year.

The one notable exception is the men’s 5000 metres for which the Beijing standard is 13:23, three seconds slower than the B-standard for Moscow (the Moscow A-standard was 13:15).

The men’s and women’s 5000 – along with the 10,000, the marathon and the race walks – is also exceptional in one other way. There will be no additional entries in these events; entry will be by entry standard only. Again, it is not explicitly stated whether the three per nation rule will apply, though the implication this time is that it will not.

This potentially could result in very limited entries in the men’s 10,000. Last year — a non-championship year in the 10,000, admittedly — the number of men who achieved the A-standard of 27:40 on a three per nation basis was around 10. A further 15 (at most; again it is three per nation) can qualify from next year’s world cross-country.

Allowing for the fact that not all who qualify for the 10,000 will want to run it – some may be marathoners, others may qualify for, and prefer, the 5000) – that could see a ield of 20 or less.

One thing the new system does not appear to be aimed at is reducing numbers. Although the ability to mix A and B-qualiied athletes disappears, that is more than balanced by the fact that the single standard is almost universally closer to the Moscow B than the Moscow A. So it is hard to see signiicantly fewer athletes attaining the qualifying marks.

The relays are the exceptions here, with perhaps a knock-on to the individual sprints. The relays are limited to 16 teams in Beijing – the top eight from this year’s inaugural world relays in the Bahamas, plus the next eight best-ranked.

That will see signiicant decreases from Moscow, where 19 nations entered a team in the women’s 4×100, 17 in the women’s 4×400, 23 in the men’s 4×100 and 24 in the 4×400. That’s a total of 83 relay squads, which will be reduced to 64 in Beijing. Even at the minimum four per squad, that is a difference of 76 athletes.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating 82 A Column By Len Johnson

If the overall numbers may not be much reduced, however, they do shape as being more predictable, which is a plus for future championship organisers.

Now for the $64 dollar question of all proposed changes – “What’s in it for me / us.” I ha- ven’t done the numbers myself, but an unoficial projection suggests an Australian team of around 45 for Beijing. That compares with the 46, including unused relay squad members, who competed in Moscow last year.

In most respects, the ‘new’ system does not look all that different from the established one. The proof will be in the eating – and, perhaps, the after-taste.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating 83 A Column By Len Johnson

WHAT WERE ONCE HABITS ARE NOW VICES

Two Sunday mornings back I found myself driving to Ferny Creek with an ice pack on my hamstring, a heat pack on my back and the wipers working overtime to sweep the rain off windscreen.

All that was missing was a sign of the type held by Wile E. Coyote as one of his miscon- ceived schemes to trap the road runner is about (literally) to blow up in his face. You know, the one that asks forlornly: “In God’s Name, Why Am I Doing This.”

Oh, there were reasons which made sense. Sort of made sense, anyway. The ice pack was to treat a pain in the backside, inlammation at the top of the hamstring; said inlammation in its turn was most probably back-related. Hence the hot pack.

Did I mention I had just taken a couple of anti-inlamms with my slice of toast. Probably didn’t have to. You get the picture.

And all of this to go for a run in the rain, a ‘run’ that was as much a prolonged hop as a rhythmic progression. A thought lashed through my mind. Had I reversed the polarity of the old Dobbie Brothers album. Had what was once (healthy) habit now morphed into a vice (running when I really shouldn’t).

What were once habits are now vices 84 A Column By Len Johnson

Most of us know the feeling. From competitive runners to when-the-urge-takes-us joggers, that same compulsion overtakes us. As we build up, more regular running is a good thing. Fitness builds, performances improve, we are nourished by a sense of self-better- ment. We are in a positive reinforcement cycle.

The negative side of this positive is that we can too easily fail to recognise the need to take a break. Coaches may tell us that training done is like money in the bank and that stopping for a few days may mean we’re not accumulating greater savings but nor are we losing any. But I’ve run with elite athletes who had the irm belief that every day’s missed training meant a day’s itness lost, and we all see runners every day who should be at home getting better instead of just adding to the recovery process by continuing stubbornly to run.

I’ve been extremely lucky with injury myself. The lip side of that good fortune is that I am all too often slow to recognise when an injury does require rest. Fortunately, I am married to a physio (not that that helps when it comes to appointments), and we are both quite good at telling each other when a run is not indicated. Occasionally, we’re good at taking that advice, too.

In looking for someone to blame for my occasional refusal to recognise the beneit of a few days’ off, I can go right back to our family chemist back in the days when I began running seriously. ‘Matt’ – not necessarily his real name – was one of the blokes I saw regu - larly running around our neighbourhood. He was boundary umpire of the local footy club, and one of the group of Glenhuntly runners I would see training at much faster pace than I could maintain at Melbourne’s Caulield Racecourse.

Anyway, I was off work one day, crook as a dog with a dose of ‘lu, or a light cold as my partner would have it. I popped into the chemist to pick up some medication.

Had I run that day, Matt asked.

I had not, and I didn’t plan to, I replied.

Why not wait until the warmest part of the day, Matt suggested, and jog around the grass at the local park. After all, he igured for me, a jog represented as proportionate a reduc- tion in my normal training day as a ‘lu / cold did in my other daily activities.

Made sense, I decided, so I went for a jog under the weak midday sun of an otherwise cool and windy autumn day. I’ve been fortunate enough to run pretty well every day in the more than 30 years since, with only one or two extended injury breaks. Refer to the opening paragraphs in deciding whether or not this is “a good thing”.

What were once habits are now vices 85 A Column By Len Johnson

I have been reminded of longevity recently with the award of Masters’ Female Athlete of the Year to Lavinia Petrie.

Petrie is the epitome of longevity. Like Pam Turney, noted Australian coach who died just over a year ago, Lavinia Petrie is of that generation who have experienced the complete history of women’s distance running. The citation for her award mentioned world W70 records for 5000 and 10,000 metres earlier this year, but Petrie’s ‘c.v.’ also shows she was a member of the irst Australian team to contest the world cross-country championships (Morocco, 1975) and was among the irst Australian women to contest the marathon.

Like many of her contemporaries, Petrie’s best running years fell in that era when the longest distance on the Olympic program for women was 800 metres, so she was denied the chance to represent her country at Olympic or world championships level.

Lavinia Petrie has also made an impressive contribution off the track at club and state administration level. Her award was for performances this year. It was not for lifetime achievement, but it could well have been.

What were once habits are now vices 86 A Column By Len Johnson

SOME GOOD THINGS IN HISTORY

History. Henry Ford famously declared it to be “bunk”. The great little parody, 1066 And All That, sub-divided post-Norman invasion English history into “all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates.”

History, though, is a good thing, especially the history of races. Some, for example, would argue that Olympic races are never boring, but those of us who sometimes ind them so can always take solace in the many wonderful races in Olympic history.

Likewise, the Zatopek 10,000 may not always produce a memorable race, but its 54-year history shows that it does so often enough and, when it does not, that the next memorable race is not too far away.

As one of the oldest non-championship races on the international calendar, the Zatopek has no need for self-promotion. To paraphrase the “if you seek his monument, look around you” inscription on architect Sir Christopher Wren’s tomb in London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, if you seek the signiicance of the Zatopek race, look at the results over 54 years.

The year 1964, the fourth Zatopek, was notable in at least two things: Ron Clarke did not win, and it was the slowest winning time in race history.

Some good things in history 87 A Column By Len Johnson

After crowning his third win the previous year with world records for six miles and 10,000 metres, Clarke missed the 1964 Zatopek. From today’s perspective, you might think that understandable given he had run the Olympic 10,000 (inishing third), the 5000 and the marathon in Tokyo just six weeks earlier.

But Clarke was not resting, nor doing a training block at Falls Creek. Rather, he was racing in New Zealand, part of a series of races either side of the Tasman which had seen him beat Murray Halberg – and Halberg’s previous world record – over three miles in Melbourne on 3 December, just six days before the Zatopek.

Clarke’s racing program since the end of the Games had been a win over 5000 in Osaka four days after the marathon (25 / 10), a loss to Tokyo 5000 gold medallist Bob Schul over 2000 metres in Sydney (1 / 11), a mile win in Melbourne, a 28:29.6 win over Halberg and Bill Baillie in Auckland (18 / 11), another mile in Melbourne, the three miles world record and, inally, a win over 5000 in Auckland (12 / 12).

In Clarke’s absence, his teammate Tony Cook won the Zatopek in 31:09. As noted, the slowest winning time ever, but there were extenuating circumstances. First, the under-rated Cook had experienced a tough program in Tokyo himself, inishing eighth in the 10,000, and also running the heats of the 5000 and the marathon. He ran most of the same post-Olympic races as Clarke.

Secondly, Melbourne experienced freakish weather that December, a vicious cold snap producing biting southerly winds and driving rain for several days around the Zatopek. The day before the race, lightning struck a plane at one of Melbourne’s airports, punching a hole in the fuselage. And Cook beat his nearest rival by almost 30 seconds.

Forty years ago, John Axsentieff won the 1974 race, out-sprinting Chris Wardlaw in the last lap.

In 1984, it was Andrew Lloyd’s second of four Zatopek wins ahead of Garry Henry and New Zealand’s Rex Wilson. Sally Pierson beat Megan Sloane to take her second Zatopek women’s race.

Lisa Ondieki’s 31:47.11, a race record, was the highlight of the 1994 Zatopek. New Zealand’s Robbie Johnston ensured the Anzac honours were split evenly, taking the men’s race in 27:58.51 ahead of Shaun Creighton and Steve Moneghetti.

Olympian Haley McGregor won the women’s race in 2004, her 32:41.10 putting her seven seconds to the good of Anna Thompson. Even now, the men’s race does not look much on paper – the winner, David Ruschena, was the only man under 29 minutes with his 28:59.55. This belied one of the closest men’s races in recent times, less than seven seconds sepa- rating the irst four, any of whom could have won at the bell.

Some good things in history 88 A Column By Len Johnson

While on the history bent, this is a good time to mention two recent books which cover signiicant eras in Australian and New Zealand running history.

Al Lawrence’s career pre-dates Zatopek race history. He is a product of the Cerutty era, Lawrence’s coach, Cecil “Chick” Hensley (Sydney’s Hensley Field track is named after him), sharing Cerutty’s attitude that there was nothing stopping Australians becoming the best in the world.

Lawrence illustrated the truth of this theory, taking the bronze medal behind Vladimir Kuts in the 10,000 at the Melbourne Olympic Games, the irst of three consecutive Olym- pic bronze medals for Australia (Dave Power in 1960 and Clarke in 1964) in the event.

“Lawro” subsequently went to the University of Houston, part of an Aussie group that eventually included Pat Clohessy, Geoff Walker and Lawrie Elliott (Herb’s brother). His book – Olympus and Beyond (A Story of Life, Sport, and Love on Four Continents – details his life, including a trip behind the Iron Curtain to run the 1957 Spartakiade in Moscow.

Hard to imagine it now, but in those days Australia and New Zealand were the Kenya and Ethiopia of middle and long-distance running. Another book – Peter Snell And The Kiwis Who Flew, by Vern Walker – recalls the era.

Walker, who inished third to Halberg and Barry Magee in the NZ 3-miles title in 1961, gives an insider’s view of many great races of the day, including a perspective on the opposition.

You can ind both books via online search engines.

Finally, let’s acknowledge two Australian Olympians who have recently passed away.

John Bartram (1925–2014) was a versatile sprinter who excelled at 100,220 and 440 yards, winning national titles at all three distances. He competed at the 1948 London Olympic Games where he inished fourth in his semi-inal of the 100 metres, missing the inal by one place.

Phil May (1944–2014) inished sixth (17.02 metres) in the inal of the triple jump at the Mexico City 1968 Olympics. He competed in three Commonwealth Games, winning in Edinburgh in 1970 when he was also second on the long jump. He served as a national selector, including several years as chairman.

Some good things in history 89 A Column By Len Johnson

LESS BOLT, LESS MO

Let’s cut one of Usain Bolt’s events, one of Mo Farah’s. Let’s see how that goes.

Cutting the Olympics down to size seems to involve letting in still more sports (regardless of their claims to internationality), and at the same time cutting events from lagship sports athletics and swimming.

Indeed, if you are to believe some of the talk loating around, both the 200 metres and 10,000 metres are under threat (along with the shot put, the triple jump and the road walks).

Yeah, right. In Beijing and London, the highest point of the Olympic Games has arguably been the performances of one Usain Bolt. In Beijing, that point was reached with Bolt’s breaking of the world record many of us thought untouchable – Michael Johnson’s mark for the 200 metres.

Bolt turned it on again in London, as did Mo Farah whose win in the 10,000 metres was not only the irst of a track distance double, but also the highpoint of a magic night for the host country with gold medals likewise to Greg Rutherford in the long jump and Jessica Ennis in the heptathlon.

Less Bolt, Less Mo 90 A Column By Len Johnson

This highlights the danger of picking events for elimination. Sprint doubles and distance doubles are part of Olympic athletics folklore, less frequently attempted and rarely attained as increased levels of competition lead to increased specialisation and a greater degree of dificulty.

One thing is certain. Change is in the air. IOC president Thomas Bach is a man with a plan — Agenda 2020 – and his plan was unanimously adopted at the IOC general assem- bly. Of course, as one critic noted, the IOC has talked big reforms before but nothing much seems to have happened. Whether it will be the same thing with Agenda 2020, who knows.

At times like these, it is tempting to think of the Olympics as co-existing within parallel universes. I was having trouble reconciling two of these universes myself.

First, there was the world in which swimming and swimmers were complaining about late night inals in Rio scheduled to satisfy the demands of television and athletics inals were being scheduled for morning sessions for the same reason.

Those television demands must seem to signify that athletics and swimming remain two of the linchpins of televised coverage of the Olympic Games, right. In what other world then, does it make sense to look for signiicant cuts in these sports.

Gigantism has been a problem for the Olympics for many years now. The multiplicity of sports, the cost of new venues (and their limited legacy value), the unwillingness of mu- nicipal, provincial and national governments to stump up cash and resources, the nervous jitters whenever the Games are mooted to head somewhere new – China, Brazil, did someone say Africa – all inhibit cities from bidding.

The IOC also decided to remove the cap on the number of sports to be contested. Quite how more sports will mitigate misgivings about the scope of the Games is something else. Oh, the IOC also announced it would consider bids from multiple cities, maybe even more than one country, but this was couched in ‘exceptional circumstances’ terms.

More sports will also mean less visibility for each of the current sports. A little less for the centrepiece sports will scarcely be noticed, but a little less for the majority of sports which struggle for the remaining space will be.

Already the task of removing wrestling from the program has proved too dificult to come to grips with (a wrestling match between two obscure Greek gods was apparently the basis for the ancient Olympic Games, they say). Baseball and softball believe they are about to walk back into the Games. ‘Modern’ pentathlon (an oxymoron if ever there was one), a sport invented by the reviver of the Games, Pierre de Coubertin, remains impossible to shift.

Less Bolt, Less Mo 91 A Column By Len Johnson

Ideally, the Olympics should embrace all sports and all nations. Practically, it must make some changes if it is accommodate as many of the sports as it wants within a cap of 10,500 on athletes. Even the latter igure is rubbery: one piece I saw this week suggested there are almost 1000 non-athletes included in the ‘athlete’ cap and that number could be easily reduced.

It is easy to argue that this or that event should be exempt from cuts. After all, the 200 will not always have Usain Bolt, Mo Farah will not always dominate the distances. Everyone loves ‘their’ event.

But there are other ways change can be accommodated. Athletics could come back from a limit of three per nation per event to two, as swimming does. Maybe relays could be mixed teams of men and women, halving the pool of relay runners. Team sports could add an extra qualifying round – perhaps played just before the Games open – to further reduce the number of teams at the Games.

Maybe all the above, plus greater movement of athletes into and out of the Village. The ceremonies are a huge part of the Olympic experience, but maybe sports could be in-Vil- lage for the Opening Ceremony, or the Closing Ceremony, but not necessarily both.

What the Olympic movement does not need is an unedifying process in which every sport, every event thinks something has to give – just as long as it is not theirs.

Less Bolt, Less Mo 92 A Column By Len Johnson

ENDING THE YEAR ON THE UP

Thanks to Jack Hale – and a couple of other juniors at the Zatopek meeting – Australian athletics ended a tumultuous year on the upswing.

Even before the 16-year-old Tasmanian ran a windy 10.13 to win the inal of the U18 100 metres at the Australian All Schools in Adelaide, his performances had generated plenty of talk. You’ll get that when you run 10.42 in Hobart, a city usually noted for sprint times at 200 metres, and even then only when a howling wind blows across the bend at the Domain Athletics Centre while failing to register higher than 2m / sec at the wind- gauge.

Adelaide, with its hot, dry summers, is far more sprint-friendly. In that context, the decision by oficials at the All Schools to move the 100 inals to the back-straight after the semis had been run into stiff headwinds was inspired.

Suddenly, a 10.42 sprinter who might have been expected to run a metre faster given the stimulus of greater competition, became almost three metres faster. Second-placed Rohan Browning, who went into the competition 0.05 slower than Hale, ran 10.18 to retain that relativity. Third inisher Trae Williams ran 10.33. The irst ive went under 10.50.

Ending the year on the up 93 A Column By Len Johnson

You can argue how much the wind meant, but even a cursory glance at the race video shows it was signiicant, the ield racing past a series of bow lags bent almost double – and scarcely moving from that position.

But Hale’s run, the performances of those in his wake, and the commentary from Matt Shirvington, Melinda Gainsford-Taylor, media and the online community meant that everyone was talking athletics for a few days, and all that coverage was positive. Contrast that to the Commonwealth Games, when almost everyone was talking athletics and almost all of it was negative.

Wind was again a factor in the Zatopek meeting a few days later, this time a big negative factor. There’s no doubt in my mind that the buffeting winds cost Kate Spencer a record in the Lisa Ondieki U20 3000 metres, cost Alex Rowe a world championships qualifying time in the 800, possibly cost Eloise Wellings a qualiier in the women’s 10,000 and had a dampening effect on times in the Robert de Castella U20 men’s 3000 and the men’s Zatopek race.

An otherwise mild week of early Melbourne summer blew up on the day of the meeting with strong southerly winds. Rowe and Spencer, competing early in the meeting, copped the worst of it. The women’s 10,000 started in similar conditions though the wind was starting to drop.

Conditions weren’t actually too bad for the men’s U20 3000 and Zatopek races, but by then the mind-set that it was a tough night had taken a irm grip.

None of that should detract from the ine run by Spencer in the women’s 3000 and the great race over the inal 600 metres between Zak Patterson and Jack Stapleton in the men’s. Spencer went for it from the gun, passing 2000 metres still well in touch with Me - lissa Rollison’s 9:03.64 record; Patterson and Stapleton raced eyeballs out, side-by-side, over the inal lap.

Throw in the gold medal in the Commonwealth women’s high jump to Eleanor Patter - son and the 2.29 metres by Joel Baden recently and there is a lot to like about our current crop of juniors.

This must be set against the disappointing overall performance in Glasgow which prompted two reviews, one internal and the other by the Australian Sports Commission, but at least the performances at year’s end – along with the generally favourable reaction to the Wardlaw Report – should help balance any pessimism.

Ending the year on the up 94 A Column By Len Johnson

Athletics Australia has also released its selection policy for the Beijing 2015 World Cham- pionships. The good news is that the policy of inclusion is set to continue. A couple of controversial calls aside, the recent past has seen Australia select all qualiied athletes, and this continues (as it should with the changed qualiication system).

Although the single-standard system – set, generally, in between the previous A and B-standards – mean’s it will be tougher to qualify one athlete, it will be paradoxically easier for Australia to qualify three athletes in some events than it was to do the same in Glasgow last year.

The A and B marks set for the Commonwealth Games meant that the only way three athletes could be selected was if one of them had the A. this hit hard on the middle and long-distance events, chiely the women’s.

In the 800, the only way three women could have gone to Glasgow was if one ran a near-national record A-standard of 1:59.35. In the 5000, the A was set at 15:10; in the steeple it was 9:40. In the men’s 5000, the A-standard was set at 13:20 and in the steeple at 8:20.

By contrast, Australia can send three female 800 runners to Beijing provided all have run 2:01.00, or faster, three in the 5000 provided has run 15:20.00, or better and three in the steeple provided they have run 9:44.

In the men’s 5000, the single qualifying mark is 13:23 (the Glasgow ‘A’ was 13:20) and in the steeple it is 8:28 (against 8:20).

At the very least, the Beijing standards do not look as daunting as the previous world championships A-standards. The abolition of the B-standard may make it harder to get one athlete qualiied, but the trade-off is that it seems easier to get three in.

The standards also look more attainable in Australian conditions. If that proves to be the case, we could be in for a productive domestic season.

Ending the year on the up 95 A Column By Len Johnson

IT WAS 20 YEARS AGO TODAY

On the last Monday of the year, around 150 athletes, parents, friends and coaches gathered in the board room of the Falls Creek Resort Management building.

It was a good afternoon to be inside. Outside, a storm dumping rain and – briely – hail had just hit the village, the second, and mercifully the last, of two to sweep up from Bright and over the High Country.

The occasion, sponsored by Athletics International, was the presentation to some of the Falls Creek regulars of the numbered Edwin Flack bibs now awarded by Athletics Australia to those who have represented Australia in Olympic Games, world championships, Com- monwealth Games, world indoor championships or world cross-country championships.

Among those to receive their ‘bib’ were Collis Birmingham, Genevieve LaCaze, Ryan Greg- son, Jeremy Roff and Brett Robinson. Kelly Hetherington, James Nipperess, Emily Brichacek and Kaila McKnight, who are all eligible for the award, were also acknowledged. These nine were then joined by Ben St Lawrence for a Q&A session.

Imparting or sharing information has been part of the Falls Creek training regimen for as long as I can remember, but the occasion – along with a chance re-discovery a few weeks earlier – reminded me of a signiicant anniversary.

It was 20 years ago today 96 A Column By Len Johnson

While rummaging through a too-large store of athletics ‘junk’, I came across two mini- cassette tapes of the type used before the world went digital. One was labelled “Ron Clarke” the other, “David Parkin”. Both were dated “Falls Creek, January 1995”.

December-January 1994–95 was the irst time a formal camp was staged at Falls Creek. Distance running legend Clarke and AFL football player and coach legend Parkin were our two guest speakers. From memory, we had tried hard to get Steve Ovett who, if memory serves, had just moved to Australia back then, but it didn’t happen.

Chris Wardlaw, Damien Cook and the late Pam Turney did most of the organising, as I recall. We thought we would have our training / holiday at Falls irst, then add on an extra week for the camp program.

Some plan! At the end of the camp, we all needed a further week’s holiday.

We had a session each afternoon at Falls Creek Primary School. Fortunately, the principal of the one-teacher school had remained on-site over summer. We set up an urn and some biscuits during the talks so people could stay for a prolonged discussion as we tried to clean up afterwards.

Clarkie and Parko, though, were given star treatment worthy of such luminaries. We -or ganised their talks for the Falls Creek Motel in the Village Bowl. The running community came to hear Clarke; Parkin topped this by also drawing in a locals keen to hear from a bona ide football legend (his value was about to go up, too, as he would coach Carlton to a premiership later that year).

My memory of the talks is pretty sketchy, but should improve once the tapes are tran- scribed. But I do recall Parkin saying about motivation that it operated only on an on-off switch. You either had it, or you did not, “there’s no dimmer switch that you can dial up one day and back down again the next.”

There may not have been a dimmer switch, but Parkin’s analogy got a pretty good work- out for a long time after that.

So I was thinking all those kind of thoughts during last Monday’s gathering. Like The Beatles Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts’ Club Band, it was 20 years (or near enough) ago today, and all that.

Hopefully, a few have been taught how to play along the way.

Altitude training at Falls Creek dates back to the early 1960s when the Australian Olym- pic Federation mobilised university exercise physiologists, early sports medicos and coaches in an attempt to ind venues in Australia where athletes could prepare for the 1968 Olympic Games in high-altitude Mexico City.

It was 20 years ago today 97 A Column By Len Johnson

Ironically, Clarke himself never trained at Falls. He did what altitude training he could on his European racing tours, mostly at the French facility at Font Romeu in the Pyrenees. The medallists at the ’68 Games in the distance events were almost exclusively from high altitude countries or had been able to spend extended periods training there.

The people who came to Falls back then were mostly from Melbourne University. Of athletes, Ralph Doubell was an early visitor. The Box Hill club also made the annual trek which is how Wardlaw irst got here a year before the end of the 1960s. He has not missed a year since.

It’s still a bit quieter – and cooler, thank God – at Falls in the summer than it is down in the valleys. But the numbers have swelled from a handful of insiders to hundreds each year. There’s everyone from keen-as-mustard juniors to elite national, and occasionally international, athletes. Not to mention triathlon and cycling groups.

The running is varied – from grassy aqueducts to lung-bursting climbs above 1800 metres. Each generation has made its own variations – some to the consternation of the tradition - alists – but an average week’s training at Falls in 2015 would almost certainly be recog - nisable to someone who came here back in the early days.

Off the tracks and trails, not so much. Where athletes of the 60s, 70s and 80s reclined on retro vinyl lounges drinking their cups of tea and coffee between morning and afternoon sessions, the modern-day Falls’ trainer is more likely to be lounging in a café chair lis - tening to retro vinyl, sipping a latte. If tea is taken at all, it is more likely to be chai, la - voured or herbal.

Like Sgt Pepper’s band, then, Falls Creek has been going in and out of style for almost half a century. But it’s guaranteed to raise a smile – at least once the training’s done.

It was 20 years ago today 98 A Column By Len Johnson

RANKS REMAIN THIN

With so many sources of information available at the click of a mouse these days, it is rare that I read anything from start to inish.

Many meetings and races are streamed live (even if the low resembles a kayak slalom course more than a millpond); others feature live results. Then there’s twitter feed.

If you miss all that, the IAAF, Athletics Australia and the state associations all put results up on their sites almost as soon as the last event is over. Athletics Victoria also has an ex - cellent AthsVic TV service.

Still, I stubbornly retain subscriptions to two publications, Track & Field News and Athletics International.

The former proclaims itself ‘The Bible of the Sport’, and I’ve never seen reason to argue. I might disagree with some of the content – at times even vehemently, but T&FN still speaks with authority. The latter, edited by respected British stats men Peter Matthews and Mel Watman, delivers fast, and deep, results from all over the world, including many places which fall through the holes in the world-wide web.

Ranks remain thin 99 A Column By Len Johnson

I devour every word of both publications’ major championship coverage and, likewise, every word of the Track & Field News annual ranking edition. Back in the day, the rankings used to reach me in the middle of January via snail mail on two continents. Now, they come electronically to enliven discussion, dissection and debate at Falls Creek.

I commented on last year’s rankings that it was becoming increasingly harder for Australians to get a ranking, as the sport consolidates increasingly around the championships and the IAAF Diamond League. I also remarked on the dearth of Australian track athletes getting a top-10 event ranking.

Those trends continued in 2014. Just as last year, Sally Pearson was the only Australian track athlete, male or female, to gain a top-10 event ranking. Even then, the Common- wealth champion slipped one place on last year, dropping to fourth behind three Amer- icans – Pearson’s predecessor as Olympic champion, Dawn Harper Nelson, Queen Harri- son and Lolo Jones.

Also decreasing by one – from six to ive — was the total number of Australians gaining a ranking. Jared Tallent, ifth in the 50km road walk, is the only male to crack a top-10; Dani Samuels jumps from 10th to third in the women’s discus (deserved recognition of her stel - lar year); Kim Mickle (third) and Kathryn Mitchell (sixth) retain the same positions as last year in the women’s javelin.

Last year I did a table giving the most recent top-10 ranking by an Australian in all events. I’ve updated it (below) to relect the 2014 rankings.

Among points of interest, the men’s 5000 now joins the almost complete list of track events in which it is at least 10 years since an Australian was ranked. Craig Mottram – ifth in 2005 – is our most recent ranker there.

The track event in which we do best is the 1500, with the most recent men’s ranker being Ryan Gregson (10th in 2010) and the most recent women’s Sarah Jamieson (fourth in 2007).

Jana Pittman was irst in the 400 metres hurdles in 2007, the year she won her second world championship, John Steffensen eighth in the 400 the same year and Donna MacFarlane ninth in the steeple in 2008.

Summing up, Pearson is our only current ranker in a track event, and there are only six track events in which we have had a ranked athlete in the past 10 years (2005–14, inclusive). In only 10 of the 22 men’s and women’s track events has Australia had a top-10 ranker since the turn of the century, a number which drops to nine if we exclude the Sydney 2000 Olympic year.

Ranks remain thin 100 A Column By Len Johnson

What to make of all this. First, that it getting harder to attain a top-10 merit ranking year by year (even harder if you are not a regular on the Diamond League circuit). Under these circumstances, Australia tends to do best when we have a major championship held on our own soil. So maybe the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games year will be a good one.

Athletics International also does merit rankings. Australia fared slightly better in AI judge- ment, perhaps relecting the higher value they place on the Commonwealth Games as a championship. Glasgow champion Alana Boyd got a ranking in the pole vault as did Benn Harradine in the men’s discus.

Otherwise, the same athletes made both lists, though Pearson was third in the AI top 10 for 100 metres hurdles, a place higher than in the T&FN ranking.

Footnote: It’s never been easy for Australians to crack the top-10 off limited opportunities. For historical perspective, here is a list (corrections welcome) of the most recent top-10 in all the Olympic events (ranking in parentheses after athlete name).

Ranks remain thin 101 TABLE: MOST RECENT AUSTRALIAN RANKER BY EVENT

MEN WOMEN

100 Gary Holdsworth (10) 1967 Raelene Boyle (6) 1976 Melinda Gainsford-Taylor (5) 2000 200 Damien Marsh (9) 1995 Cathy Freeman (6) 2000 Lauren Hewitt (10) 2000 400 John Steffensen (8) 2007 Jana Pittman (9) 2003 800 Peter Bourke (8) 1982 Charlene Rendina (9) 1974 1500 Ryan Gregson (10) 2010 Sarah Jamieson (4) 2007 steeple Shaun Creighton (10) 1993 Donna MacFarlane (9) 2008 5000 Craig Mottram (5) 2005 no ranker 10,000 Ron Clarke (4) 1970 Benita Willis (8) 2003 marathon Steve Moneghetti (8) 1995 Lisa Ondieki (2) 1992 110 / 100h Ken Doubleday (5) 1954 Sally Pearson (4) 2014 400h Rohan Robinson (10) 1998 Jana Pittman (1) 2007 20kW Dane Bird-Smith (10) 2013 Jane Saville (7) 2006 50kW Jared Tallent (5) 2014 hj Tim Forsyth (3) 1997 Alison Inverarity (9) 1994 pv Steve Hooker (2) 2010 Tatiana Grigorieva (7) 2006 lj Mitchell Watt (2) 2012 Bronwyn Thompson (5) 2006 tj Andrew Murphy (7) 2001 no ranker sp Justin Anlezark (9) 2003 no ranker dt Benn Harradine (8) 2011 Dani Samuels (3) 2014 ht no ranker Bronwyn Eagles (8) 2002 Kim Mickle (3) 2014 jav Jarrod Bannister (9) 2011 Kathryn Mitchell (6) 2014 dec / hep Jagan Hames (10) 1998 Jane Flemming (7) 1993 A Column By Len Johnson

YOU CALL THAT A KNIFE?

It is 50 years to the day that I write this – 16 January, 2015 – since Ron Clarke began one of the greatest years in distance running with a world record for 5000 metres in Hobart.

The record was set on the old North Hobart Oval. Hobart did not have an internation - al-class track at the time; meetings, including national championships, were held on one of the city’s major football grounds. Clarke ran 13:34.8, slicing just 0.2 off the mark previously set by Vladimir Kuts.

Clarke tells several good stories about this run. One is how Graeme Briggs, a former president of Athletics Australia but, above all else, a proud Tasmanian, was meeting director. According to Clarke, Briggs did everything – sold the tickets on the gate, wrote the notes for the meeting program, acted as chief referee and did the announcing.

Another is based on the fact that the oval sloped from one side to the other, from back- straight to front-straight. Clarke was concerned that any slope might invalidate a record, as the runners ran 13 times ‘down the hill’ in the 12–1 / 2 laps of the 5000 and only 12 back up it.

You call that a knife? 103 A Column By Len Johnson

As insurance, Clarke had another 5000 scheduled for Auckland two weeks later and, in that phrase often found in current selection policy, “for the avoidance of doubt” ran 13:33.6 to ensure the world record had passed into his possession.

Some of Clarke’s best friends still believe the story, but I’m certain Graeme Briggs’ attention to detail would have run to — (1) ensuring the track did pass muster for record purposes; and (2) having a surveyor’s certiication in his back pocket attesting that to be the case.

They don’t set so many world records in Tasmania that Graeme Briggs would have chanced letting one slip through his ingers.

I have begun with a long digression. I’ve written about the fabulous year of 1965 elsewhere but the other point which has always fascinated me about Clarke is his prodigious racing program.

Clarke, and his contemporaries and rivals, Kip Keino and Michel Jazy, raced prodigious- ly in 1965. Clarke raced no fewer than 54 times that year, according to a list compiled for Ron Clarke Talks Track (Track & Field News, 1972). The list is comprehensive, but still miss- es some Melbourne interclub runs.

Fifty-four races in a year: you can get tired just reading it. Caleb Ndiku, the Kenyan athlete ranked No.1 in the 5000 metres last year, raced just 16 times (17, if you count a heat at the Kenyan champs: All-Athletics.com).

Of other top-ranked athletes in 2014, Yenew Alamirew raced 16 times, Galen Rupp 14 (15, if you count a heat of the 3000 at the World Indoors), Edwin Soi 11, Thomas Longosiwa eight and Mo Farah, though he did have his London marathon debut to take into account, seven times.

You can imagine Clarke having a Mick “Crocodile’ Dundee moment with today’s distance runners.

“You call that a racing schedule?” “No – this is a racing schedule.”

Times, as they say, have changed. Clarke, Keino and Jazy’s ‘summit meeting’ at 5000 metres in 1965 came at Helsinki’s World Games, a two-day meeting which I was lucky enough to attend in 1974. Jazy won from Keino and Clarke.

The World Games are no more. Helsinki no longer has even an IAAF World Challenge meeting. The top-ranked Finnish meeting is now in Turku, part of the European Athletics program.

You call that a knife? 104 A Column By Len Johnson

Clarke set his fabulous 27:39.4 world record for 10,000 metres in Oslo. There hasn’t been a 10,000 held there for yonks.

Looking through the list of Clarke’s career races, many of the meetings either no longer exist as international meetings, or no longer exist at all.

Runners were “amateur” back then, though you would be naïve to think there was no money in the sport. Scores of Australian athletes beneitted for almost 40 years from competition grants from the Ron Clarke Fund, set up from the national federation’s share of his appearance money. I was one of them, getting a grant towards the cost of a trip to the Montreal marathon one year.

But they did race more often. Clarke squeezed in all but six of his races into two blocks of 64 and 52 days, running 22 from 9 January to 13 March and another 16 on the road from 26 May to 16 July.

It is worth quoting Clarke’s Track & Field News male Athlete of the Year citation to give an idea of the quality of those races. Written by the magazine’s Managing Editor at the time, Dick Drake, the article comments:

“That he ran fast during those two periods has been well documented... but consider that he never ran a poor race. Despite unbelievable poor running conditions (humid, 90 deg.F weather or bad winds and rain) in many meets and numerous fast and often competitive races with few days’ rest, his average in 10 2-mile races was 8:39.2, in six 3-mile races 13:11.8, and 11 5000s (less one Mexico City high altitude race) 13:34.5.

“His 11-meet 5000 average was actually faster than the world record (13:35.0) before the season began!” (Exclamation point theirs, but fully justiied!)

Clarke’s powers of recovery were amazing. The previous year he had run, and won, a 5000 in Osaka just four days after inishing ninth in the Olympic marathon, lost a 2000 then won a 5000 in successive races against Olympic 5000 champion Bob Schul in the following two weekends, come within 15 seconds of his own world record at 10,000 10 days after that, then defeated Murray Halberg at three miles, and broken the New Zealander’s world record, in Melbourne two weeks later again.

I’m not suggesting anyone should emulate Clarke’s racing schedule, but with the men’s 5000 and 10,000 world records now into their 11th and 10th year respectively, maybe less training and more racing might at least be worth considering.

You call that a knife? 105 A Column By Len Johnson

YOUNG MEN IN A HURRY

I never worked with, or for, Harry Gordon, who died this week on the Gold Coast, aged 89. But he had a signiicant inluence on my life.

Gordon, a former journalist, editor, newspaper executive and, latterly, the oficial Austra- lian Olympic historian, wrote a book in the early 1960s which galvanised my interest in Australian sport and, speciically, Australians in international sport.

Young Men In A Hurry: The Story of Australia’s Fastest Decade, detailed Australia’s rise in the 1950s from international also-ran to sporting powerhouse. It did so by telling the stories of some of the great sportsmen (overwhelmingly) and women of the era.

Two coaches – the irascible and mercurial Percy Cerutty and the tennis disciplinarian Harry Hopman, are chapter subjects, as are two champions who forged their reputations guiding racing machines – jockey Arthur ‘Scobie’ Breasley and F1 world champion Jack Brabham.

John Landy, Herb Elliott, Dawn Fraser – the one female, Peter Thomson, John Konrads, Russell Mockridge, Stuart McKenzie, Dave Sands and John Marshall complete the roster.

Young men in a hurry 106 A Column By Len Johnson

Gordon observed them all irst-hand through his life as a reporter in Melbourne, Europe and the US. His role is encapsulated by the opening chapter heading: “I Was There When It Happened”.

“I have had a rare opportunity,” Gordon wrote, “to study a procession of young Austra- lians in a roaring hurry... between them, in just one decade, they took Australia from comparative sporting obscurity to rank with the mightiest nations.”

In 1950, Gordon continued, no Australian had won Wimbledon for 18 years. No Australian had won the British Open (golf). No Australian male had won a swimming gold medal since 1924 and Australia lagged badly in three other high-proile Olympic sports in athletics, cycling and rowing.

Yet in one decade, Australia dominated tennis’s Davis Cup and Australians won ive Wimbledon singles titles. Australians swimmers set world records and won gold medals. In athletics, Australia’s female sprinters and male middle and long-distance runners led the world. Peter Thomson won ive British Open titles and Australia teams won the world amateur and professional trophies.

Breasley won the British Jockeys premiership and bold, brash Stuart McKenzie won the Henley Diamond Sculls four times in a row.

Change was afoot as early as the 1948 London Olympics. In 10 Olympics from Athens in 1896 to Berlin in 1936, Australia won 26 medals, 11 of them gold, six silver and nine bronze. That tally was virtually doubled at the London and Helsinki 1952 Games where Australia won 24 medals (eight of each colour).

At Melbourne’s home Olympics in 1956, Australia won no fewer than 35 medals, 13 gold, eight silver and 14 bronze.

In three Olympic Games after the war, then, Australia’s overall tally of medals rocketed from 26 to 85 and a further 22 (8–8–6) came at the Rome 1960 Olympics which closed Gordon’s decade.

I received Young Men In A Hurry as a gift (Christmas or birthday, I can’t recall which). But I remember that Harry Gordon’s book and Brightly Fades the Don, Jack Fingleton’s account of the 1948 cricket tour of England by Bradman’s undefeated ‘Invincibles’, ignited a lifelong passion for international sport.

Thanks to Harry Gordon’s book, athletes such as Elliott, Lincoln, McKenzie, Fraser, Thom- son and Konrads became my heroes, to be followed soon after by Clarke, Clayton, Doubell, Boyle and many others.

Young men in a hurry 107 A Column By Len Johnson

In particular, I loved his chapter on the 1958 Santry Mile, the fabulous race in Dublin which Elliott smashed the world record, running 3:54.5, and led four others – Merv Lincoln (3:55.9, second-fastest ever), Melbourne Olympic 1500 champion Ronnie Delany (3:57.5), Murray Halberg (3:57.5) and Albie Thomas (3:58.6) under four minutes in one of the greatest mile races ever.

Gordon evoked the chaotic post-race scenes in “a dressing room packed by priests and pressmen and hordes of little boys with ine rich brogues and stubby pencils and auto- graphs.”

Elliott told Brother Ahearn, who taught him at Perth’s Aquinas College, “that the whole thing felt much too easy.”

Delany, asked by his local priest how he felt, could only mutter: “Tired, Father, tired.” And how might Elliott be beaten? “There’s just one way to beat the man – by tying his legs.”

Finally, Lincoln, with the perspective of an outstanding miler destined never to be best in his native country and an eye to history, said: “Wouldn’t John Landy have liked to be here. He can take a lot of credit for what we did here. He was the pioneer... if he hadn’t inspired Herb and myself, we wouldn’t even be here.”

My irst encounter with Harry Gordon was at the Barcelona 1992 Olympics where, I fancy, he began his role as Australian Olympic historian. I was there for The Age with Ron Carter, Garry Linnell and photographer Stuart Hannagan and our apartment shared an entrance with our Sydney Morning Herald colleagues and Harry Gordon’s.

Some nights when I’d come back (very) late from the track, Garry and Harry wo uld be sharing a scotch and a conversation on the balcony. If I wasn’t too tired, I’d join in (the con - versation, that is. I’ve never liked scotch).

In his role as AOC historian, I often checked things with Harry. He was kind enough to read a draft of The Landy Era. He knew the story nearly as well as the main protagonist.

Though I never worked for, or with, Harry Gordon, I did owe my position at The Age to his son, Michael Gordon.

When I came back to Melbourne from Canberra in 1986, sports editor Gordon had me working on a Edinburgh Commonwealth Games supplement. In the midst of this, Linnell was offered a job at another publication. Michael Gordon asked if I’d like the ill the va- cancy – he didn’t have to ask twice.

One way or another, Harry Gordon had a big inluence on my own career. For the Australian Olympic movement, he is going to be a hard man to replace.

Young men in a hurry 108 A Column By Len Johnson

WOMEN BETTER MARATHONERS?

“Women are better at running marathons than men.”

An article which starts with an assertion like that is bound to grab your attention. The piece in the current edition of The Guardian Weekly certainly grabbed mine.

The contention that women make better marathoners than men has been around almost as long as women have been irst wanting to run, then running, marathons. I recall seeing it in The Van Aaken Method, a slim volume published by Runner’s World as the irst running boom was peaking back in the 1970s.

Dr Ernst Van Aaken, a medico and running coach, encapsulated his thinking in one sen- tence as, “Run slowly, run daily, drink moderately and don’t eat like a pig.” On women, he contended they were not equal to men in speed and strength, but were much more adapt- able when it came to endurance. Statistically, women lived longer than men (still do) and a greater proportion of subcutaneous fat afforded women greater energy reserves and protection from the cold.

Anecdotally, women recover from marathons faster than men. Chris Wardlaw, who coached both, found that Kerryn McCann would return to marathon training far more quickly than Steve Moneghetti, for example.

Women better marathoners? 109 A Column By Len Johnson

Now, a statistical study has determined that women are better marathoners. ‘Better’ means in this context that women are more proicient – by a signiicant margin of 18.61 percent — at maintaining a consistent pace.

The Van Aaken booklet was published by Runner’s World and had I been paying attention, I would not have had to rely on The Guardian Weekly (TGW) to discover the latest study comparing men’s and women’s endurance.

Runner’s World would have told me over a month ago (here) about the full study and had an article six months earlier about two studies into the Chicago marathon (and here).

According to TGW the survey was conducted by Jens Jakob Andersen, a former competitive runner and statistician from Copenhagen Business School, and supported by Polish statistician Wojciech Fedyszyn. They looked at 1,815,091 results from 131 marathons around the world between 2008 and 2014.

Of course, this is just statistics and science and Australian readers will quickly appreciate that the study has not been benchmarked against the subjective opinions of Tony Abbott, Big Mining and the peak business councils.

The tentative indings relate only to pace management. Whether women are better at maintaining pace because men overestimate their ability – and, consequently, start too fast, women underestimate theirs (and start too slow), or because of physical differences is still an open question.

The article cites Andersen as offering a few general tips based on the study – start out slower than feels natural; don’t get carried away by excitement, stick to your race plan and don’t compete with others; slow down immediately if you cannot keep to your planned pace.

This advice is aimed at John and Jane Marathon, but it strikes me quite forcefully that it is also an accurate description of the sort of paced racing we see now in races such as Ber- lin and Chicago, when the world record is the goal.

I’ve written before about how structured pacing has changed the manner in which marathoners explore their performance limits. What else was Shigeru Soh doing way back in 1978 when he ran the irst 30km in Beppu at better than 3mins / km pace than getting carried away by excitement in pursuit of Derek Clayton’s world best 2:08:34.

What, too, was Steve Jones doing when he ran away from the sole pacemaker, and rivals including Carlos Lopes and Rob de Castella as he ran 61:45 for the irst half of the 1985 Chicago race in pursuit of Lopes’s world record 2:07:12. Carried away by excitement, I’d say again.

Women better marathoners? 110 A Column By Len Johnson

Brave as Soh’s and Jones’s efforts were, each step was taking them closer to crashing and burning than to their ultimate goal.

Contrast that to a contemporary record attempt. A phalanx of pacemakers running to an agreed pace relieves the favoured one – and it’s usually one – of any tricky decision on pace management. You want 61:45 at half-way? You’ve got it, and all without a skerrick of responsibility.

The best of the pacemakers will guide you through to 30km, sometimes beyond. Then, of course, comes the tricky bit. The tricky bit always comes in a marathon, but it’s got to be a great boon not to have anything much to worry about for the irst three-quarters of the race.

And, of course, there’s been no competition up to that point. In 1985, Jones had his own problems, but he also created problems for the chasing pack. De Castella, Lopes and the others had to worry about whether Jones would come back, or whether they would have to chase him down. In the end, he did a little of the former, they not quite enough of the latter.

So, women make better marathoners mainly because they demonstrate superior pace management. Organised pace-making relieves the top runners of any responsibility for, or anx- iety about, pace management. The end result is similar.

One key difference – especially relevant with no woman coming close to Paula Radcliffe’s 2:15:25 world record – is that the sort of organised pacing regularly made available to the top male runners is not offered to the top females. If it were, the world record might be more approachable than we think.

Women better marathoners? 111 A Column By Len Johnson

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

“On the road again Just can’t wait to get on the road again”

— On the Road Again, Willie Nelson

As I write this on Friday evening, I am contemplating the drive tomorrow from Melbourne to Canberra for the Canberra track meeting and the World Cross Country selection trial the following morning.

Like Willie Nelson, it will be a case of “on the road again” — whether “I just can’t wait” to be on the road again is another matter entirely.

In contemplation, it seemed a no-brainer to go to Canberra this weekend. A track and ield meeting in which, among other highlights, Alex Rowe is after a fast 800 on Saturday night, the cross-country trial on Sunday morning and the chance to catch up with old friends — a formidable combination.

Trouble is, I’ve wound up having to drive to get there. A combination of a dearth of cheap airfares (put that at 10 percent of the reason) and my own prevarication (that’s the other 90 percent, in all honesty) made driving the only option.

On the road again 112 A Column By Len Johnson

The Saturday night, Sunday morning combo has been on the Canberra menu several times previously. Given a summer trial for WXC is virtually forced upon us, it makes sense to combine it with the national capital’s stop on the Australian Athletics Tour. Except for those years when the Tour runs express, that is.

I used to drive to Canberra regularly for athletics events. My irst trip there was for the Paciic Conference Games back in 1977, when I watched Chris Wardlaw win the PCG Eve marathon (the second edition of the race which became the Canberra Marathon).

In fact, I’ve never been to Canberra for a marathon other than by car. Dave Cundy did offer me a trip one year when I briely held invitation-worthy status, but I magnanimously knocked it back. Pity I can’t cash in the credit now.

Things always went smoothly – from memory, anyway, they did. But my two most recent trips to Canberra, both of which involved a WXC selection trial, didn’t go so well.

The irst was back in the heady days when The Age still used to send people places. The bean-counters baulked at an airfare, but were happy for me to drive up in a hire car and stay with friends. So far, so good, but in booking the car I forgot that the preferred option the hire car company had for me was ‘small’.

This was never an issue at airports, which rarely have small cars to hand, but the local branch did. We wound up driving to Canberra in a Hyundai Getz, our younger son crammed into the back seat with the luggage while we had the “copious” legroom of the front seats. Almost 10 years later, he still brings it up with a burning sense of injustice.

Next time was just the two of us. What could go wrong? Well, the weather could, for a start. Not just wrong, but cataclysmically wrong. Between Holbrook and Gundagai the irst of a series of severe electrical storms struck.

A couple of times the rain was so severe we had to pull to the side of the freeway to stop, but that wasn’t a great option as those vehicles still on the road couldn’t see us anyway. The weather got better, but did not really clear until the outskirts of the ACT.

To say I am looking forward to the drive this time would be an exaggeration. There is a slight sense of trepidation about it. It will be a solo trip, so I’ll be in full agreement with every stupid thing I say. Maybe there’s still time to pick up a Willie Nelson CD.

Nelson was a runner himself, if I may digress. I owe this piece of knowledge to a 1980s US Runner’s World piece on the great man, an article written so long ago that it wasn’t even wrapped in an “I’m a Runner” package.

On the road again 113 A Column By Len Johnson

While suring, I came across this excerpt from a 1979 interview: “For a health kick, I ain’t on one,” Neslon said. “But… I ind that running makes me feel better. It had gotten to the point where I was killing myself at night, so I had to do something in the daytime to make up for it. Now that I run, I don’t stay out as late as I did. I don’t drink much anymore, and I don’t even smoke cigarettes…. It’s not that I’m all that strong willed. It’s just that when you’re done running ive miles you don’t want a drink or cigarette. All you want to do is latten out.”

Willie’s favoured running outit was shorts and bandana. No shirt, but the race he spon - sored did have a souvenir ‘T’.

The XC trial will be conducted again on the Stromlo Forest Park course, Deek’s homage to the man-made course on Portugal’s Algarve Coast the Australian team trained on before the Lisbon 1985 world cross-country.

It took the Canberra ires to bring the course to reality, de Castella pitching it to the local government as a restoration project for a burnt-out area of the old Stromlo Forest. It was an inspired decision. Ironically for a course built in a ‘forest’, the one thing that is missing is shade. For that reason, the racing starts at 7:30am Sunday, a good thing as the forecast maximum is 34deg.C.

It is manicured grass, but the course undulates over the hills and through the gullies of the old forest plantation. Sunday’s winners, and those who make the team, will have to pass a stern test of cross-country running.

Maybe I can wait to get on the road again, but I can’t wait to see some tough races over the testing terrain of Stromlo Forest Park.

On the road again 114 A Column By Len Johnson

RUDISHA FOR CANBERRA

So – David Rudisha is coming to Australia for the fourth time in six years to race at 800 metres. He will race in Sydney and Melbourne, but he might have done well to have considered Canberra as well.

Australia has been Rudisha’s early-year itness benchmark of choice in 2010, 2011 and 2012, and would have been in the past two years had it not been for injury setbacks.

Rudisha set a fabulous unpaced world record 1:40.91 in winning the gold medal at the London 2012 Olympic Games but has been beset by knee problems since. In 2013, he ran 1:45.14 in truly atrocious conditions at the New York Diamond League, but didn’t make it to the world championships. Last year, he was back, but inished second in the Common - wealth Games to London silver medallist Nijel Amos.

Rudisha appeared it, but underdone last year. So his performances here next month will tell us much about his chances of returning to his best as he builds towards the world championships in Beijing.

It will also tell us a lot about Alex Rowe, who (at long last) equalled Ralph Doubell’s Australian record last year and has his sights set on taking sole possession with the stimulus of racing against the great Rudisha.

Rudisha for Canberra 115 A Column By Len Johnson

Can Rudisha get back to his best. How good can Alex Rowe be. Two fascinating questions which may well be answered in Australia next month.

Rudisha will race in Sydney (21 March) and Melbourne (28 March). He could have done worse than go to Canberra last weekend, where more than Australia’s male 800 meter runners were crying out for some dependable leadership.

Rudisha could have done worse than Canberra in another sense, too. The national capital is one of the best venues in the country for the two lap event, boasting a collection of performances which stands up well against Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane.

The Australian Institute of Sport track at Bruce sits around 636m above sea level and is sheltered from the worst of any wind that is blowing. That little bit of altitude — 2000+ feet — is a help for most 800 runners (not to mention sprinters and jumpers, who also enjoy the national capital).

Canberra gets plenty of sunny summer days – last Saturday was a typical one – and, being an AIS facility, the track is always in pretty good nick. It is an intimate stadium, with the grandstand close to the front-straight events and spectators able to get close on the back- straight and bends, too.

Results over the years tend to bear out the good for 800 theory on Canberra. The Austra- lian all-comers marks were set at other venues – Rudisha’s 1:43.15 in Melbourne in 2010, Maria Mutola’s 1:56.15 in winning gold at Sydney 2000 – but there have been a plethora of good runs on the AIS track.

Peter Bourke’s 1:44.78 in winning the 1982 national title in Brisbane is the fastest by an Australian in Australia, but Rowe’s 1:45.38 last Saturday is the fastest by an Aussie in Oz since Bourke won the Commonwealth title in 1:45.18 in 1982.

Kris McCarthy, Commonwealth bronze medallist in 2002, irst shot to national prominence when he kicked off the Sydney 2000 Olympic year by running 1:45.77 in Canberra in Jan- uary. At the same meeting, Tamsyn Manou (Lewis) ran 1:59.21, her fastest and the closest approach by any Australian woman to Charlene Rendina’s national record 1:59.0.

More of Tamsyn soon, but other men to have run fast times in Canberra include WA athlete Barry Acres who ran 1:45.77 there in 1988, a performance that still sees him just outside the national all-time top 10. Middle-distance running thrived in Canberra with AIS coach Pat Clohessy’s “Distance Classics” meetings, with Acres, Simon Doyle, Pat Scammell, Paul Gilbert, Dean Kenneally, Simon Lewin, Ian Gaudry and another Landy, John Landy’s son Matthew, among the many to race well there.

Rudisha for Canberra 116 A Column By Len Johnson

Tamsyn Manou ran many of her best races in Canberra, her 800s a feature of the early-season meeting year on year. Besides her 1:59.21, Manou ran three other times under 2:01 – 2:00.48 in 2008 (the year of her world indoor championships gold medal), 2:00.84 in 2003 and 2:00.95 in 1998.

Manou was rarely challenged in Australia, but in that 2003 race she was given a heck of a fright by Susan Andrews, who inished right on her heels in 2:00.94.

Lisa Corrigan was another to beneit from Canberra’s 800-friendliness, with the Australian mile record holder’s personal best 2:01.59 coming in 2007. Georgie Clarke chased Manou home in 2000, running an U18 national record 2:01.81 in second place.

Melissa Breen (national 100 record of 11.11 last year) and Sally Pearson (11.16 last weekend) have shown recently that the national capital is a sprinter’s track, too, and it seems that, after being off it for the past few years, the capital is back on the Australian Athlet- ics Tour again.

Sprinters and jumpers are no doubt quite happy about that. But middle-distance athletes should have a smile on their faces, too.

Rudisha for Canberra 117 A Column By Len Johnson

ALL DRESSED UP

Last Saturday in Perth, Nina Kennedy cleared 4.59 metres in the pole vault.

Before a recent IAAF rule change recognising the best performance – indoor or outdoor — as the world record in the vertical jumps, Kennedy’s performance would have been a ju - nior world record.

Kennedy’s mark surpassed previous successive performances of 4.57 and 4.58 by Sweden’s Angelica Bengtsson. But the world record still belong to the Swede with her 4.63 achieved indoors in 2011.

A year ago, and a year from now, Kennedy’s 4.59 would have made her favourite for the gold medal at the World Junior Championships. But 2015 is a World Youth Championships year and Kennedy is ineligible for that, turning 18 on 5 April.

So, to use and old saying. Kennedy is all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Except — a big ‘except’, too — Kennedy did clear 4.59 metres. She did beat dual Common- wealth champion and Australian record holder Alana Boyd into third place (Liz Parno v was second). She did move into fourth place on the all-time list behind Boyd’s AR 4.76, Kim Howe’s 4.65 and Emma George’s 4.60. The latter was the last of George’s 12 world records when she set it in Sydney in 1999.

All dressed up 118 A Column By Len Johnson

Kennedy also joined four others in having achieved 4.50, or higher, outdoors as a junior. Ironically, the next two below this mark on the junior all-time list are Yelena Isinbayeva and Silkie Spiegelburg, who have gone on to rather handy senior careers, to say the least.

Kennedy inished fourth in last year’s world junior championships in Eugene, her 4.40 placing her behind gold medallist Alena Lutkovskaya of Russia (4.50), Desiree Freier of the USA (4.45) and Eliza McCartney of New Zealand (4.45).

All three medallists were born in 1996 and will thus be too old for next year’s World Ju- niors in Kazan, Russia. Maybe that will be the time Nina Kennedy is all dressed up and has somewhere to go.

Kennedy’s performance in Perth continued a pleasing sequence of high-level achievements by Australian juniors this track season.

Of course, we all know about Jack Hale’s brilliant 10.13w – the fastest by a Youth under any conditions – at the Australian All Schools in Adelaide last December (and Rohan Brown- ing and Trae Williams right behind him). Hale is sideline with hamstring soreness at the moment, but he is World Youth eligible this year.

In Melbourne, two months before the Hale-storm, Joel Baden cleared 2.29 to win the high jump at the Associated Public Schools combined sports. He followed up with a 2.27 a few weeks later to give him the two best performances by an U20 for 2014. He is not eligible for the 2016 world juniors but inished eighth in Eugene.

(Great as it was, Baden’s was merely the second-best height achieved in Australian school competition. Back in 1991 at the Australian All Schools in Melbourne, Tim Forsyth was pushed to an outright national record 2.31 to defeat Lochsley Thomson’s 2.27.)

Then there is Eleanor Patterson, not 19 until May, the Commonwealth women’s high jump gold medallist in Glasgow last year.

Kennedy might be stealing the pole vault headlines but another 17-year-old is doing al- right in men’s competition. Kurtis Marschall leads the nation in men’s pole vault this year with 5.42. In fourth place at 5.25 is another 17-year-old, Angus Armstrong.

Matt Denny has been a phenomenon in the throws for some time already. He is now pushing up towards 60 metres in the men’s discus, while 18-year-old Alex Hulley holds the national lead in the women’s hammer.

Middle and long-distance has also unearthed some quality performers. Zak Patterson and Kate Spencer were such polished winners of the U20 3000 events at the Zatopek meeting last December. Spencer won easily, while Patterson was pushed to the limit by Jack Stapleton.

All dressed up 119 A Column By Len Johnson

Patterson has continued in the same vein, featuring prominently in the mix in the domestic tour events to date.

Spencer, too, has maintained form, inishing second to Madeline Heiner over 5000 at the Hunter Classic and then second to Vicki Mitchell in the world cross-country trial to clinch selection in the team to Guiyang.

Courtney Powell, while not yet performing at the level which took her to the Australian senior cross-country title in Albany last year, ran well enough to make the team as well. Not so fortunate was another youngster, Jack Rayner, who nonetheless was impressive in sixth place in the men’s trial.

Zatopek 10,000 and Hobart 5000 winner Brett Robinson, who inished a couple of places behind Rayner in the trial, was included as a discretionary selection. Rayner’s time will come, however.

With so many talented youngsters around it seems inevitable that some of them will break through in Beijing this year or Rio next year.

All dressed up 120 A Column By Len Johnson

THAT REMINDS ME OF SOMETHING

One of the consequences of the ageing process is that everything tends to remind you of something else.

So it was with the news at the start of the week that Mo Farah had run his irst “world record”, an 8:03.40 for two miles indoors. Mo’s run immediately reminded me of Daniel Komen, to whom I’ll come back in a minute.

But irst, Mo. What a run. Now the two miles qualiies as a rarely-run distance. Commenta- tors tend to describe a distance that way when they actually mean seldom run, not regularly run, or even not run since last month, but the two miles is truly a rarely run distance. Would that its metric cousin, the 3000 metres, was too – but that’s a reminder of something else.

That said, the two miles is also one of those distances at which most good runners have a crack at one time or another. Take Mo Farah himself: before last week his previous track race had been an outdoor two miles in Birmingham last year when he broke Steve Ovett’s British record.

That reminds me of something 121 A Column By Len Johnson

Ovett, in his turn, ran the record in beating Henry Rono at the end of the 1978 track season in a classic encounter which brought together the world’s best miler – well, OK, there was a chap named Coe around, too, but he had yet to turn his ierce attention to the 1500 / mile — and the man who had set world records for 3000, 5000, 10,000 and the 3000 steeple in a fabulous splurge that year.

Craig Mottram, too, has a pretty impressive ‘two’. He ran 8:03.50 in defeating Tariku Bekele in Eugene in 2007 and is the third-fastest ever at the distance outdoors (and fourth- fastest overall).

Sonia O’Sullvian, Meseret Defar and Genzebe Dibaba, who set the current women’s indoor best in Birmingham last year, have all raced over the distance, too.

The IAAF no longer recognises the two miles as a world record-eligible distance, so we have a world best instead.

World record or world best, however, Mo was glad to have it, saying post-race: “It’s very special to inally break a world best on home soil in front of a British crowd.”

Racing is never just about records. Farah has compiled a fabulous list of championship wins since the 2010 Europeans without setting a world best or world record until now. Equally, it is never just about gold medals either, despite the old saw that medals last forever, records are always broken.

Farah has worn some criticism for his apparent lack of interest in testing himself against the clock, criticism he acknowledged in Birmingham. Acquiring his irst global mark was not going to change his approach, he warned, despite its feeling “amazing” to set a world best

“I’ll never give up chasing medals for chasing world records,” said Farah.

We can still hope that having varied it once for an indoor two miles, Farah may vary his approach again towards seeing just how fast he can go over 5000 and 10,000 metres.

Now, back to Daniel Komen. Komen is the only man to break eight minutes for two miles. Although I didn’t see him do it the irst time, what Mo Farah’s run reminded me was that I was privileged enough to be trackside as Komen did it for the second time (it’s still only been done twice).

Komen set the record at 7:58.61 in Hechtel in 1997. Just over seven months later, he did it again in Sydney, running 7:58.91. In Hechtel, Komen ran both mile sections in under four minutes; in Sydney, he was just over four minutes for the irst mile and then motored home with an impressive negative split.

That reminds me of something 122 A Column By Len Johnson

In my recollection, I was standing trackside during Komen’s race. I can’t believe that was the case, so I guess I was standing in the media mixed zone which at Sydney Olympic Park is outside the track but at track level. In any case, it was an unbelievable experience watching him whizz by.

Looking back at the result now, the DNFs (the pacers) were Julius Kiptoo, who hadrun 27:30 in the Zatopek a couple of months earlier, Martin Keino and Eliajah Maru. Second place was Zatopek winner Luke Kipkosgei in 8:17. Lee Troop was fourth, Steve Moneghet- ti sixth.

On the same night, Maurice Greene ran 9.99 in the men’s 100, the irst sub-10 in Australia. Great performance as that was, I recall Ron Clarke wondering on the television coverage why we were getting excited about Greene repeating something he had done time and time again rather than Komens’ performance, something that had only ever been done once before, and by the same man at that.

Komen, no doubt, was one of the greats, despite having a span at the top which did not coincide with either the Atlanta 1996, or Sydney 2000, Olympic Games.

After running four minutes for the irst four laps of the 1994 Commonwealth Games 10,000 as an 18-year-old (he blew up and inished ninth), Komen burst into prominence after missing selection for Atlanta, running 12:45.09 in Zurich and a still-current world record 7:20.67 for 3000 in Rieti.

In 1997, Komen took the gold medal in the Athens world championships 5000, set up with a 1:56 mid-race 800, broke eight minutes for two miles and set a world record 12:39.74 for 5000. He began 1998 with that second sub-8 and a world indoor 3000 record 7:24.90 (also still standing), won the Commonwealth 5000, and – one or two lourishes aside — that was about that.

Until someone does something at two miles to remind me.

That reminds me of something 123 A Column By Len Johnson

REVIEWING THE REVIEWS

Clive James, Peter Cook, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Jo Kendall, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Ste- phen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson are just some of the stars to have emerged via The Cambridge Footlights Revue, the annual revue staged by CambridgeUniversity’s Footlights Club.

The Wardlaw and Buchanan reviews into athletics will be over the moon if the sport goes on to produce such a list of new talents.

The Buchanan Report, chaired by former coach of the Australian men’s Test cricket team, John Buchanan, was released on 27 February. The irst thing to say, paraphrasing Joe Hock- ey on the Commission of Audit, was that this was a report to the Sports Commission, not by the Sports Commission. An independent review.

Independence has its pros and cons. One glaring point against, that I can see, is that the review laid most of its criticisms at the feet of Athletics Australia, as did Sports Commission commentary on the release.

Reviewing the reviews 124 A Column By Len Johnson

Largely, that is fair enough. Athletics Australia runs the sport. But it hardly squares with the fact, acknowledged and the subject of comment in the report, that the ASC contribution to AA’s revenue has increased from $3.1million in 2004 to $7.8million in 2014 at the same time as sponsorship income has dried up.

In percentage terms, the Sports Commission contribution to Athletics Australia’s total revenue has risen from 36 percent in 2004 to 63.2 percent in 2014.

He who pays the piper calls the tune. The Sports Commission has been involved in most of the decision-making at Athletics Australia all that time, including appointments. It can hardly be expected to share the responsibility for some of the things that went wrong in Glasgow, or to be involved in the day-to-day decision making, but nor can it be excluded from many of the criticisms directed at Athletics Australia by the Buchanan Review. The Commission was putting the money in, surely it was also making its views known.

There were several other areas where the approach of the Buchanan Review could be queried. Some of the recommendations seem beyond the capacity and resources of any Olympic sport. Like the Olympic ideals, perhaps they are goals to strive for, not necessarily to attain. The criticism, explicit and implied, of current board members bordered on of- fensive; the recommendation that 40 percent of funding be held back subject to progress seems hardly conducive to reassuring staff and motivating them to work better.

That said, the two reviews suggest positive ways forward for the sport after Glasgow. Whether implementation of the recommendations will produce a lowering of talent to match the Footlights Club remains to be seen, but hopefully there will be much to keep us entertained.

(Disclaimer: though married to an AA Board Member and a friend of the chair of the Ward- law Review, the writer thinks independently.)

Who’s Up For Cross-Country?

I am lucky enough to be heading off to the world cross-country in a couple of weeks.

Cross-country has always had a hint of the exotic about it. This year’s championships, to be held in the Chinese city of Guiyang, is sure to have plenty.

It starts a pretty big year in athletics for China. As well as its regular stops on the World Race Walking Challenge and IAAF Diamond League, China this year host two world championships — the cross-country and the world championships in Beijing in August.

This continues a trend of taking the cross-country championships to a variety of countries and terrains. Fukuoka in 2006, Mombasa in 2007 – with its huge crowds the like of which the event has not seen before or since, Amman in 2008.

Reviewing the reviews 125 A Column By Len Johnson

Some say the world cross-country should be held in bigger cities. Precedents exist. IAAF president Primo Nebiolo created a course around an inner-city park when his home city of Turin hosted in 1997. The championships have been held in Paris, Madrid and Rome.

They were also staged in New York, in 1984, though in reality it was at Meadowlands, New Jersey.

But the championships have been held at exotic venues as often as major ones. Gateshead, Limerick and Durham; Stavanger in Norway; Marrakech and Rabat in Morocco (the irst time Australia competed); Auckland (only time in the southern hemisphere).

It remains to be seen how well these championships will be supported. Like the marathons at the world championships, Guiyang will boast far greater depth than any other cross-country race around. But will it attract any of long and middle-distance’s biggest names.

One intriguing feature is a mass race on the morning of the championships. With a potential pool of 1.3 billion from which to draw, this could be quite something to experience.

Reviewing the reviews 126 A Column By Len Johnson

ON THE CUSP OF HISTORY

It could be that in the next eight days, some 85 years of Australian middle-distance running will be consigned to history.

Or then again, maybe not.

On Saturday (14 March) night in Sydney the best Australian women’s ield that could be assembled, augmented by American 1:59.12 performer Molly Ludlow and New Zealand’s Nikki Hamblin, will line up in the women’s 800 metres.

The stated target is a world championships qualiier (2:01.00) but recent talk suggests Charlene Rendina’s venerable national record 1:59.0, set back in the mists of time at the 1976 Victorian state championships, is also on the radar.

The Sydney Track Classic likewise offers the irst of two 800-meter races in which David Rudisha will clash with Alex Rowe and then with Alex Rowe, Jeff Riseley and Joshua Ralph in Melbourne.

Rudisha is Rudisha – world record holder, Olympic champion, two-time world champion. He is his own target, but Rowe has set his sights on Ralph Doubell’s Australian record 1:44.40, a mark set even further back into the mists of time in winning the gold medal at the Mexico City 1968 Olympic Games.

On the cusp of history 127 A Column By Len Johnson

Rowe equalled the record last year and, with his international opportunities limited this year by his medical studies, wants to take sole ownership during the Australian season.

As I said, we’ve been here before. Many times before. Mostly we’ve wound up with Bob Dylan “stuck inside of Mobile with those Memphis Blues again”. To riff off into a Stevie Wonder classic, we want the deal signed, sealed, delivered.

That the two 800 meter records have proven so enduring has been a major source of frustration in Australian athletics.

Other, equally venerable marks fell. Graham Crouch broke Herb Elliott’s 1500 record — a world record when Herb set it in winning the Rome 1960 Olympic gold medal — at the Christchurch Commonwealth Games. Mike Hillardt, Simon Doyle and Ryan Gregson have since further improved it.

Ron Clarke’s records went, too, the 3000 to Andrew Lloyd irst, then the 10,000 to Shaun Creighton and, inally, the 5000 to Lee Troop. All three marks have been subsequently broken again, with Craig Mottram taking the 5000 into 12-minute territory in 2004.

On the women’s side, Jenny Orr’s 1500 record, set in Munich in 1972 the irst time the event was contested at an Olympics, lasted till 1996, but was then improved by Kate Anderson and Margaret Crowley and subsequently by Sarah Jamieson.

Pam Ryan’s 12.93 in the 100 hurdles lasted longer – from 1972 until Sally Pearson broke it at the 2007 national titles in Brisbane – but it inally went, too.

The 800 records, however, continued to withstand assault after assault. Peter Bourke ran 1:44.78 in his Commonwealth Games gold medal year of 1982; Brendan Hanigan got into the low 1:45s until injury cut him down; Hillardt, Doyle and Pat Scammell split their good runs between the 800 and 1500.

For a long time, two minutes proved to be the stopper for Australian women. Sharon Stewart, Susan Andrews, Wendy Old, Heather Barralet and Terri Cater were among those who went close to a sub-2.

Only Tamsyn Lewis, Marg Crowley, Madeleine Pape and Judy Pollock joined Rendina with a ‘1’ in front of their best time (Susan Andrews did, too, in a mixed race), but Lewis’s 1:59.21 in Canberra at the start of the Sydney 2000 Olympic year was the closest any of them came.

On the cusp of history 128 A Column By Len Johnson

In looking for explanations as to why the two records have survived so long, the obvious point is that both Doubell and Rendina were good athletes, very good athletes. Doubell won the World University Games 800 the year before his Olympic triumph, beating Ger- many’s Franz-Josef Kemper, the world ranked no.1 that year and was highly competitive both indoors and outdoors through several years.

Rendina had a sound background at 400 metres as well as 800, being world-ranked at both events during her career. She ran in the 4×400 team which set a national record at the Montreal 1976 Olympics which stood until 2000.

Finally, Rendina had an untapped potential at longer distances, which were not really an option for her at the peak of her career. The longest women’s distance was 800 up until 1972 then 1500 through till Los Angeles in 1984 when the 3000 was adopted. Rendi- na’s performances in road races as a veteran, however, suggested she had plenty of aero- bic endurance on which to draw.

It might be drawing a long bow to hope both 800-meter records go in the next week (if you bet against it, don’t expect generous odds!), but at least there again up for discussion.

Rudisha’s slowest 800 in four Australian races is 1:44.80. His other three have been in the 1:43s range, so keep up with him would be a good suggestion for Rowe, Riseley and the rest.

And critical mass is building in the women’s event, with Brittany McGowan, Selma Kajan, Kelly Hetherington, Katherine Katsenavakis and now Abbey de la Motte all pushing through towards two minutes.

Whatever the outcomes, we are in for some high-quality 800-meter running in Sydney, Melbourne and at the national championships in Brisabne in the coming weeks.

On the cusp of history 129 A Column By Len Johnson

WHEN SPORT AND POLITICS INTERSECT

This column would not normally comment on the passing of a former Prime Minister, but we will make an exception in the case of Malcolm Fraser, who died in the early hours of Friday, 20 March.

Though he was a lifelong supporter of AFL team Carlton, Malcolm Fraser was not a noted sports tragic like, say, his successor as prime minister, Bob Hawke. Nor did he embrace national teams in the altogether clunky manner of other successors in John Howard and Kevin Rudd.

But in the case of Malcolm Fraser, sport and politics intersected in a number of interesting ways.

Most famously, of course, was in his support for US President Jimmy Carter’s call for a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games – a call which Fraser said took both him and West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt by complete surprise.

That support was also one issue Malcolm Fraser ultimately admitted he had got wrong, though it took his opposition to calls for a boycott of Beijing 2008 on the grounds of China’s treatment of Tibet for him to go public.

When sport and politics intersect 130 A Column By Len Johnson

More of that in a moment, irst, let us go back to an earlier intersection with Australian Olympic sport.

Fraser took power in Australia in controversial and bitterly divisive circumstances in 1975, installed as ‘caretaker’ prime minister by Governor General Sir John Kerr after Kerr sacked the incumbent, Gough Whitlam. His only tasks as PM were to pass the budget his party had blocked in the Senate and to advise an early election, which his party won comfort- ably.

Little of that bitterness had abated by the time the Montreal 1976 Olympic Games rolled around some eight months later. The government decided that Waltzing Matilda would be played as Australia’s anthem at medal ceremonies (as it had been at the 1974 World Cup); trouble was, it was never played as we did not win any gold medals.

One of Australia’s beaten favourites was 1500m freestyle swimmer Steve Holland, the ‘victim’ of a team effort by the Americans to beat him. Holland bettered his own world record, but the two Americans swam faster.

Malcolm Fraser had attended part of the Games, and at a terse meeting with team members, Holland reputedly told him to “**** off,” bitter both that his effort was perceived as a failure and that his two rivals received much greater support in their preparation than he had.

On Fraser’s return to Australia, his government dusted off a Whitlam government report recommending the establishment of a national institute of sport. A few years later, the Australian Institute of Sport was born and a great era of Australian sporting achievement began.

But it was the Olympic boycott, called in response to the Soviet Union’s intervention in Afghanistan at the end of 1979, which was the major intersection between Fraser and Olympic sport. This was a clash that demonstrated the conlicting elements of Fraser’s political persona: on his own account he was against the idea and forced into it reluctantly, but, once committed, he played the politics of it ruthlessly and relentlessly hard.

The campaign got under way as the Olympic year began. Once committed, the Australian government brought every weapon it could to bear on the Australian Olympic Federation (as it then was), the Olympic sports and individual Olympic athletes.

The government bullied, cajoled, and downright bribed sports and athletes to comply with its wishes. A favourite tactic was to depict each watershed moment as decisive, only to call for, or have supporters call for, a “reconsideration” when the decision did not go the government’s way.

When sport and politics intersect 131 A Column By Len Johnson

Thus the AOF voted narrowly – by six votes to ive – in May to go. The government immediately called for a new vote. Sports were offered new facilities or support to alternative competitions if they pulled out. Equestrian, hockey and volleyball joined the boycott, hockey despite all players declaring their support in favour of competing.

Individuals were placed under immense pressure, which some found intolerable. Raelene Boyle and Tracey Wickham were among the high proile pull-outs. Sports and individual athletes were told their support for a boycott was crucial to world peace. They could be responsible for World War II if they went to Moscow. It was heavy stuff.

Ultimately, it was all for nothing. Ron Casey was head of sport for the Seven network, which held the Olympic television rights, and used to keep his hand in through comper - ing the Sunday World of Sport program.

Casey copped more than his share of pressure. A year after the Games, WOS ran some footage of the USA-USSR athletics match staged in the Moscow Olympic stadium. The cam- era then panned back to Casey who dead-panned” “That’s funny. I thought the Russians were still in Afghanistan.”

I am not sure when Malcolm Fraser recanted on his views, but I heard him interviewed on the ABC in March 2008 about calls for a boycott of the Beijing Games. Boycotts don’t work, he told the interviewer, citing 1980 as an example.

But he didn’t go as far as to say the 1980 boycott call had been wrong. Acutely aware of the extra angle to the story, I contacted him and he took that extra step.

As Fraser told me, Helmut Schmidt had been assured an Olympic boycott would not be among a raft of responses President Carter would propose to the Soviet intervention but, within hours, Carter unilaterally announced one. For the sake of solidarity, Australia and West Germany fell into line.

It was, Fraser said at the time, bad policy and “extraordinarily divisive... If I had the chance to argue the policy before, I would have said, ‘We support you in a lot of things, but for heaven’s sake don’t do this’.

“I never thought it was good policy because policy, to be successful, needs to be sustainable,” Mr Fraser said.

“Not only was it divisive between different sports, but also within sports.”

The impact on athletes was terrible, he said. “The individual choices that were made created divisions within sports and between sports.”

When sport and politics intersect 132 A Column By Len Johnson

“It’s not something I would want to see repeated.”

Malcolm Fraser’s aggressive political instincts meant his underlying liberal social views were often suppressed. The arc of his post-Parliamentary life brought many of those views back to the fore. Most notably on multi-culturalism and refugees, of course, but I’m glad he also acknowledged the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics was wrong.

When sport and politics intersect 133 A Column By Len Johnson

AND I WASN’T EVEN RUNNING

I remember my irst world cross-country. I was sweaty. I was nervous. I had a bad case of “OMG, is that (insert name of megastar distance runner) over there. Yes, yes, it is.”

... and I wasn’t even running. I’ve never run a world cross-country, other than in my dreams. I ran the selection trial several times and I reckon one year I didn’t I was going well enough to have made the top 15. But the team? Not so much.

My irst trip to the race then known as the toughest in the world to win was to Lisbon in 1985. My wife was in the team and the Australians had a pre-championships training camp at the Aldeia de Acoteais (hope I got the Portuguese right) on the Algarve.

It was an idyllic camp which no-one really wanted to leave. The main training area was a man-made cross-country course little more than a kilometre away, venue for the annual Cherry Blossom cross-country race.

That where spot-the-megastar got started. To the Australians, this was a paradise; to the Europeans (yes, they actually ran the world cross-country in those days) it was a regular warm-weather training venue.

And I wasn’t even running 134 A Column By Len Johnson

Portugal had several superstars in its own right. Rosa Mota was there; so, too, Fernando Mamede and Carlos Lopes.

Lopes, the Olympic marathon champion, soon to be marathon world record holder, a two- time champion already, was an overwhelming favourite to win at home and bring glory back to his small country. Yet he cruelly delected the expectation onto Mamede, an im - mensely talented runner but one known to struggle with the burden of public expectation.

Come the big day, Lopes sat quietly in the middle of the leading pack as Mamede burst to an early lead only for the pressure to take its inevitable toll. Lopes took out his third cross-country championship. A few weeks later, for those who say marathon and cross-country don’t mix, he set a marathon world record in Rotterdam.

My next trip was to Auckland for the 1988 race, the one and to-date only time the world race has come to the southern hemisphere. Again, there were big names everywhere, as well as Kiwi legends such as Bill Baillie and John Walker prominent around the place.

The Age had booked me into a motel across the road from the Ellerslie Racecourse venue and again, there were big names aplenty – Brendan Foster, Jos Hermens, Dave Moorcroft.

The 1988 men’s race was as close to team perfection as it got for Kenya. Up front, two- time champion John Ngugi beat teammate Paul Kipkoech, the world 10,000m champion, to make it three titles on the trot as Kenya swept seven of the irst eight places and eight of the irst 10.

Ingrid Kristiansen, a disappointment on earlier occasions, inally broke through for a com- fortable win in the women’s race.

On the strength of that, The Age decided to send me to Stavanger the following year, then on to the Cinque Mulini race in Italy. I was puzzled by this stunning act of corporate lar- gesse until I bumped into the managing editor (who pulled the editorial inancial strings) one day.

“Great trip you’re getting,” he grumbled. “Still, it’ll be worth it if ‘Deek’ or Lisa (Ondieki) wins.” I almost blurted out that neither was in fact running, but caught myself just in time.

In the event, Steve Moneghetti inished fourth and Jackie Perkins ifth – till then the highest inishes by Australians – which rather saved my bacon.

The Stavanger race was memorable for two reasons. One was encountering the entire Kenyan team on a circuit of the local park one morning, engaged in a series of Indian ile sprints – last man to irst, last man to irst, repeated often. I could still run a bit then, but I judged I would have had trouble keeping up with the recovery, much less the sprint.

And I wasn’t even running 135 A Column By Len Johnson

The other notable feature was the weather. Stavanger, in western Norway, is on the end of the Gulf Steam, so has a relatively benign climate. But the eve of the race a ierce squall and storm lashed the area, dumping buckets of rain. Next day, the course was a quagmire and I still remember a long television shot of Ngugi, well clear of the ield, zig-zagging his way up a long, straight hill as he searched for the best running.

Course inspection that year turned out to be a non-event. No-one saw the course in race condition until they turned up on the day. In the ultimate irony, race day was sunny again. I’d worn every layer of clothing in my bag and was sweating freely in the media seats.

I didn’t get to another world cross-country for quite a few years, but latterly have been lucky enough to get to Fukuoka (2006), Amman (2009), Bydgoszcz (2010), Punta Umbria (2011) and now Guiyang.

Whatever the future of the event, it remains one of the world’s greatest races. My inter - est was nurtured by the group I trained with in Melbourne – Chris Wardlaw, Rob de Cas - tella and coach Pat Clohessy were all great boosters of the event – so that getting to the event itself was an absolute bonus.

To see it come to relatively exotic venues such as Fukuoka, Amman and now Guiyang is one of the pleasures. But I will still treasure perhaps the favourite memory of watching that irst men’s race in Lisbon.

Five laps I think it was, with the whole 200-plus ield still largely in one pack after the irst, then progressively being cut down until 20 were in it at the bell. The roar when Lopes burst clear along the back of the course reverberated all the way around the venue.

He could run a bit, that bloke.

And I wasn’t even running 136 A Column By Len Johnson

PRINCIPLES OF NOT RUNNING IN CHINA

Chris Caton is an eminent Australian economist. This means he lives in a theoretical world in which you are constantly trying to explain why the data doesn’t it the model, or vice versa. Hammering square pegs into round holes — that sort of thing. Anyway, Chris Caton is very good at it, which is why he is always being quoted on interest rates, the future of the economy (aka ‘life, as we know it’), etc, etc. But the Chris Caton I know, or knew, was also a columnist for Terry O’Halloran’s Australian Runner magazine. An incisive and witty observer, he would send us a column each edition which we ran under the title ‘Letter From America’. This, I think, was based on the even more famous weekly broadcast by the same name which Alistair Cooke used to do for the BBC World Service. I must say, for what it is worth, Chris used to make me laugh a lot more than did Alistair Cooke. Maybe this was the Aussie idiom applied to a US road running scene populat- ed by larger than life personalities like Bill Rodgers, Alberto Salazar, Patti Catalano, Lynn Jennings and Joan Benoit, on the US side, and then regular foreign visitors – aliens, as the US Immigration Service so quaintly called them, such as Rod Dixon, Allison Roe, Anne Audain and our own Rob de Castella and Lisa Ondieki.

Principles of not running in China 137 A Column By Len Johnson

I’d irst been exposed to Caton’s take on running through our mutual Canberra friend Brian Lenton. Both men shared the same off-centre way of looking at the running scene.

Chris Caton was linked closely enough to Canberra running that one of the regular Strom- lo Forest courses – the Caton Five (miles, that is) – was named for him. Sadly, in the way of discarded economic models, it has now largely disappeared, rendered largely inacces- sible by changes to the forest since the 2003 bushires.

The other thing I remember Chris for was a set of principles he advanced for – I think — for a Canberra marathon program or one of Brian Lenton’s History of Australian Distance Running books.

Parodying the Runner’s World-type self-help training programs, Caton instead set out a set of principles which, closely followed, would guarantee you would not be running within a few months.

I don’t remember the principles, and I may even be mistakenly recalling their intent, but the past week or so on the road in China has brought the thinking behind the principles of not running looding back.

My irst principle of not running would therefore be very simple: Go To China. If you go to China, and are still running after more than a few days travelling around, you are obviously one very dedicated runner.

We started our trip in Guiyang for the world cross-country championships. We were spoiled rotten there – a lovely park just near the team hotels with a 3.5km (short) or 7km (long) loop on asphalt paths topped with a thin layer of synthetic track. You could even make a 10km-loop by adding on every possible minor loop off the main course.

The course for the cross-country aside, there weren’t too many other obvious places to run, and even fewer closer in to town where you would be staying on a normal visit.

Then it was on the road to Guilin and Yangshuo – the beautiful karst environment made famous by China’s top director Zhang Jimou and the Microsoft screen saver. In Guilin, our one run involved the sort of high-gutter jumping, concrete steps and pedestrian dodging that I used to take in my stride but ind a little harder to cope with now.

Yangshuo, with its many kilometres of bike routes and quiet riverside roads is a lot bet - ter, but it is still all largely concrete surfaces which numb the more mature limb far more quickly than formerly.

Principles of not running in China 138 A Column By Len Johnson

Against that, there have been wonderful walks – mainly to the famous Dragon’s Back rice-ield terraces – and cycling from our out-of-town accommodation to the centre of Yangshou which have been an adequate substitute. Recovery has consisted of boat trips on the Li River on the famous bamboo rafts.

If you’re giving up running for a few days, I can recommend being rafted down a serene river through the karst landscape as a substitute. No exercise, but you’ll get just as high as endorphins can ever take you.

Finally, a word from our sponsor. We’re here primarily for the world cross-country, an event which it has become fashionable to decry.

I’m as guilty as anyone in writing about the problems the world cross-country is experi- encing – and they are real enough. Most of Europe and most of north Africa has ceased to compete. Numbers are dropping.

But that shouldn’t blind us to the event’s strengths. It was never true that everyone did cross-country. Some great champions never ran the world event (or its predecessor, the International Cross-Country championships). Alain Mimoun won the latter four times, his great rival Emil Zatopek never ran it.

Lasse Viren and the Finns were too busy getting some warm-weather training in to es- cape the Finnish winter. Steve Ovett and Dave Moorcroft both ran the English cross-country, but not the IAAF race. Even Sebastian Coe did not compete though, like the other two, he ran plenty of cross-country in his winter season.

And Guiyang brought us an innovative course which was both tough, and accessible to spectators (you could see it all from the grandstand), and great racing in all four events. It may have been solely between east African runners (some running for Bahrain), but it was exciting racing.

The battle for the senior men’s individual title between the Kenyan pair Geoffrey Kam- woror (the winner) and Bidan Karoki (second) and Ethiopia’s Muktar Edris (third) was a last-man standing affair – almost literally, an accidental bump between the two Kenyans playing a role.

I’m sure the inspiration will last until I’m back in a more runner-friendly environment.

Principles of not running in China 139 A Column By Len Johnson

LIU XIANG SIGNS OFF

There were many moments of triumph at the London Olympic Games, but was there one more poignant than when Liu Xiang kissed the inal hurdle.

Liu had hopped along the track to the inish line after his achilles tendon gave way at the irst hurdle. In the confusion, he was directed away from an approaching wheelchair and towards the inish line. Having completed the distance, if not the race, he bent down and kissed the barrier.

It was a long goodbye. Now, with Liu’s retirement announcement this week, it turns out it was the inal goodbye. He never raced again after his second breakdown in successive Olympic Games.

On Chinese social media this week, Liu told his fans the struggle to regain itness was futile.

“Even though my heart is illed with enthusiasm... my foot told me over and over again ‘no’,” Liu wrote.

“It can’t take the intense training and competition anymore.”

Liu Xiang signs of 140 A Column By Len Johnson

Liu’s coach, Sun Haiping, thought the hurdler could not regain a level of itness at which he could compete with the world’s best. He could run around 13.50 — hardly slow, but not fast enough for a former Olympic champion (equal world record 12.91), former world champion and former world record holder (at 12.88).

It’s all relative.

I was fortunate to see Liu win at the Athens 2004 Olympics, becoming China’s irst male track and ield gold medallist, and again at the Osaka 2007 world championships.

Great as those experiences were, they did not compare to seeing Liu Xiang’s amazing impact in China. Twice I witnessed domestic triumphs, the irst at the Asian Games in Guangzhou in 2010, the second on a rainy night at his hometown Shanghai Diamond League meeting in 2012.

After this week’s announcement, I went back to the reports I wrote then. The Asian Games piece tried to explain the Liu Xiang phenomenon.

It’s hard to explain how popular Liu Xiang is in China, the report began.

The superstar hurdler ‘emerged’... to win his third consecutive Asian Games title.

Liu’s every move was cheered to the echo. Over 70,000 packed into the stadium for both his heat and inal, the only two occasions the venue was full.

Anything remotely connected with Liu raised a cheer. There were cheers when the night’s schedule was displayed, wilder cheers when the hurdles were placed on the track.

At Liu’s appearance pandemonium ensued. The hubbub continued even as the starter tried to get the ield away. Liu appealed for silence, raising his foreinger to his lips in a ‘shush’ gesture.

The hush lasted only for the few moments it took Liu to progress safely to, and over, the irst hurdle. That was enough to erase the memory of Beijing 2008 when his Olympic campaign collapsed in tatters without jumping a hurdle.

The rest, as they say, is history; even if relatively recent history.

Liu won in 13.09 seconds, about a metre quicker than his own expectation and up to two metres ahead of anyone else’s.

He had not raced since May, when he inished third behind David Oliver and Chinese teammate Shi Dongpeng in the Shanghai Diamond League meeting. From third in a race to third in the world — not bad progress, that.

Liu Xiang signs of 141 A Column By Len Johnson

Liu actually came back from his achilles tendon injury (in September 2009), running 13.15 at the Shanghai meeting.

Asked whether he can win the gold medal at London 2012, Liu replied beautifully: “I believe I can, but ‘can’ is just a word. It is easy to say ‘can’ and ‘cannot’. No matter what, I will make every effort.”

All this happened inside the Asian Games main stadium. What is hard to comprehend is how big Liu Xiang is outside the stadium.

Rubbery igures have been bouncing around here all week, but it is estimated that up to 600 million watched Liu’s race on television. Around half China’s 1.3 billion population might seem fanciful when we compare it to peak viewing igures for any event in other parts of the world, but it was undoubtedly watched by huge numbers.

Liu is extraordinarily popular here in ways, and for reasons, we don’t understand. Partly it is because of his achievements, but China has many Olympic gold medallists... partly the explanation may lie in the event he does.

Male Chinese athletes, Asian athletes in general, cannot sprint, or rather cannot run as fast as their counterparts in the Caribbean, US and Africa. Then along comes Liu, in an event traditionally dominated by Americans, and wins a world junior title, an Olympic Games gold medal and sets a world record.

In that way, Liu represents every Chinese and every Asian and his every move will continue to be dwelt upon until he runs hurdles no more.

Two years later, Liu Xiang was again coming back and I wrote after he beat David Oliver and Jason Richardson:

For all day and most of the night, it rained in Shanghai – sometimes in drizzle, sometimes in torrential squalls.

Who could stop it? Who would stop it? Liu Xiang, of course. For the 12.97 seconds it took the former Olympic champion and former world record holder to establish he has a huge chance of taking a second Olympic gold medal in the 110 metres hurdles in London later this year, the rain pretty much disappeared.

Not even the weather gods dared rain on Liu Xiang’s parade.

Not that any of the crowd packed into Shanghai stadium would have cared. Through a miser- able night, they had waited patiently for the hurdles, the inal event on the program.

Liu Xiang signs of 142 A Column By Len Johnson

It could have poured, it could have hailed, the wind could have blown in a typhoon – none of it mattered as long as Liu delivered the win. And he did.

Now, Liu Xiang will no longer run hurdles. But his presence is still huge in Chinese athletics. The day after the world cross-country, he appeared in Guiyang with men’s champion Geoffrey Kamworor at an IAAF sponsorship announcement for the coming world championships. No connection – other than being Liu Xiang.

Inevitably, Liu’s achievements will be seen through the prism of his three Olympic: Athens the triumph; Beijing, where he could not get off the blocks in his heat in a home Olympics, and London, where he could not rise to the irst hurdle, the disasters.

Until another Chinese male athlete matches his feats, Liu Xiang will still hold a revered, and honoured, place. He has shown 1.3 billion fellow Chinese exactly what is possible.

Liu Xiang signs of 143 A Column By Len Johnson

PEAK MARATHON

Forget peak oil, forget peak gas. Have we reached peak marathon.

Here we are, in the midst of the northern hemisphere spring marathon season, Rotterdam and Paris down, Boston this coming Monday and London next weekend, and, is it just me, or are things a little bit been-there, done-that.

Sure, we’ve been spoiled a bit of late, notably by Dennis Kimetto’s world record in Berlin last year after one battle with Emmauel Mutai and Geoffrey Kamworor which was not settled until the inal 5km, and another one with the clock over the last 3km.

On the negative side, there was the news of Rita Jeptoo’s positive test. The three-time Boston women’s champion and two-time Chicago winner (including a double-double in 2013–14) has been banned for two years after testing positive to EPO. Maybe some of that bad vibe is still reverberating.

Former world record holder Wilson Kipsang and Kimetto will clash for the irst time in the elite men’s race in London where a fabulous women’s ield is headed by Edna Kiplagat, Florence Kiplagat, Priscah Jeptoo and Mary Keitany. Three-time Dubai marathon winner Aselefech Mergia of Ethiopia is also in the line-up. Spring may merely be saving its best till last.

Peak marathon 144 A Column By Len Johnson

Even so, it seems things have been a little quiet. Perhaps a trip to China for the world cross-country took me out of the loop for a while, but I can’t recall reading less build-up to the big springmarathons than I have this year.

Of course, even if we have reached ‘peak marathon’, it may not be the same thing as peak oil. Under the peak oil theory, production goes into terminal decline once the peak rate of extraction has been reached.

Peak marathon, if indeed it exists much less has been attained, would merely represent the low-point in a cycle which could be expected to pick up again.

All athletics events follow a similar cycle. It is only a couple of years ago we were bemoaning the absence of 2.40m-plus performances in the men’s high jump. Thanks to Bohdan Bondarenko, Mutaz Essa Barshim and others, scarcely a major competition has gone by recently without one or more athletes jumping at that height or higher.

Similarly, just when it seemed Sergey Bubka’s 6.15m may have represented the upper limit of performance in men’s pole vault, Renauld Lavillenie clears 6.16.

Sally Pearson ran 12.28 to win the 100m hurdles gold medal at the Daegu 2011 world championships, winning by an incredible two metres in the fastest time run in almost 20 years. Far from daunt her opponents, Pearson’s performance galvanised them. She won the Olympic gold medal a year later, but in 2013 Brianna Rollins of the US went even faster – 12.26 – and took the Australian’s world crown.

Still, worrying signs have been hanging over the marathon for some years. First, there is the obsession with records. Berlin has been the race of choice for world record attempts and, when things fall into place, as they did last year, has delivered both a new record and a cracker of a race.

When they don’t, however, there can be disillusionment. Like there was when Haile Gebrselassie, having all dangerous rivals kept out of the 2009 Berlin race, fell off record pace and ran ‘only’ 2:06:08 for his fourth win. No competition; no record, either.

Or in 2012, when Kimetto appeared not to challenge Geoffrey Mutai over the closing stages as his training partner went on to secure the win and the accompanying World Marathon Majors prize-money bonus.

There is also a worrying atomisation when it comes to races. The concept of the majors, which hoped to showcase competition among the best, has not worked quite as envis- aged. Only London and, to a lesser extent, Chicago seem to have deep enough budgets to bring together signiicant numbers of the top runners.

Peak marathon 145 A Column By Len Johnson

Berlin has its ‘record’ niche, Boston its tradition and New York – well, New York is New York. But what is Tokyo: someone; anyone.

In any case, most race budgets appear to run out at one management group and a varying number of pacemakers (the more the better it seems). It is not a sustainable formula.

The major championships – Olympics and world – still attract the deepest ields and, in the case of the Olympics, a top-end even London would struggle to match. And it was only 2008, seven years ago, that we saw the greatest championship ever run as the late Sam- my Wanjiru kept attacking until the Beijing Olympic ield was broken and beaten.

Three years before that, the two best female marathoners in the world, Paula Radcliffe and Catherine Ndereba, battled out the Helsinki 2005 world championships race, Radcliffe winning.

Abel Kirui, Stephen Kiprotich, Edna Kiplagat and others have kept up the tradition of great champion winning great championships, but the inside and outside view is that the championships are no longer where the best runners and performances are found.

Even the rankers seem to have accepted it is more important to run fast in the marathon than to win a championship or that doing the former cancels out the failure to do the latter.

So with no non-championship race drawing all, or most, of the top talent and some of the top talent not racing the championships we are left with no deinitive test of the best marathoners in the world.

My view could be too pessimistic and, as noted, London could change all next weekend. I hope so.

And there is still the comforting thought that even if we have reached peak marathon (for now), it only brings us closer to the next big performance.

Peak marathon 146 A Column By Len Johnson

PEAK MARATHON

Forget peak oil, forget peak gas. Have we reached peak marathon.

Peak marathon 147 A Column By Len Johnson

Peak marathon, if indeed it exists much less has been attained, would merely represent the low-point in a cycle which could be expected to pick up again.

Similarly, just when it seemed Sergey Bubka’s 6.15m may have represented the upper limit of performance in men’s pole vault, Renauld Lavillenie clears 6.16.

When they don’t, however, there can be disillusionment. Like there was when Haile Gebrse- lassie, having all dangerous rivals kept out of the 2009 Berlin race, fell off record pace and ran ‘only’ 2:06:08 for his fourth win. No competition; no record, either.

Peak marathon 148 A Column By Len Johnson

Berlin has its ‘record’ niche, Boston its tradition and New York – well, New York is New York. But what is Tokyo: someone; anyone.

In any case, most race budgets appear to run out at one management group and a varying number of pacemakers (the more the better it seems). It is not a sustainable formula.

The major championships – Olympics and world – still attract the deepest ields and, in the case of the Olympics, a top-end even London would struggle to match. And it was only 2008, seven years ago, that we saw the greatest championship ever run as the late Sammy Wanjiru kept attacking until the Beijing Olympic ield was broken and beaten.

Three years before that, the two best female marathoners in the world, Paula Radcliffe and Catherine Ndereba, battled out the Helsinki 2005 world championships race, Radcliffe winning.

Even the rankers seem to have accepted it is more important to run fast in the marathon than to win a championship or that doing the former cancels out the failure to do the latter.

My view could be too pessimistic and, as noted, London could change all next weekend. I hope so.

And there is still the comforting thought that even if we have reached peak marathon (for now), it only brings us closer to the next big performance.

Peak marathon 149 A Column By Len Johnson

THAT’S RELAY GREAT

Usain Bolt is competing in the 4×100 and 4×200. And the event is in the Bahamas next weekend, 2–3 May.

Do you need anything else to make the IAAF World Relays a noteworthy event. Oh yeah, I guess — three other Jamaican sprinters to get the baton to the great man. Then again, some of the athletics world and most of the non-athletics world would probably be happy just to watch Bolt go round on his own.

The world relays were a bit of a sleeper event last year. It was the inaugural event and the irst year you never know how a new event is going to take. Staging it in the Caribbe- an was a courageous move, as Sir Humphrey Appleby might put it.

Never mind, the relays were a success, helped no doubt by the fact that qualiication for this year’s world championships relays could be locked away via a top-8 inish.

But the relays were much more than the 4×100 and 4×400 of the championship schedule. A 4×200 was included as well and, for the (middle) distance aicionados, there was a 4×800 and a 4×1500. Nearly everyone got a medal – even Australia brought one home through Zoe Buckman, Bridey Delaney, Brittany McGowan and Melissa Duncan in the women’s 4×1500.

That’s relay great 150 A Column By Len Johnson

And, of course, in these rarely run events, there were world records aplenty and pretty well every nation set area and national records. Add Bolt, glorious weather, and what more could you want, really.

The addition of Usain St Leo Bolt is not the only reinement to the second edition of the world relays. Of much less import, the 4×1500 is superseded after just one appearance by a distance medley relay, or DMR as it will inevitably come to be known after the American style.

The DMR is a mixed grill of a relay, offering varying distances. The most common one in the US is the 2-mile, now 3200m, DMR. The one on the world relays program, however, comprises legs of 1200, 400, 800 and 1600 metres for a total distance of 4000.

This means national teams will have to come up with one, or at most two, 1500 runners, adding in 400 and 800 specialists to make up the full team. It is a little easier than inding four 1500 runners capable of challenging the likes of Kenya.

The relays concept has a lot going for it. Relay competition pulls athletes together when the rest of the sport naturally pits them one against the other. They are spectator friendly, and would be even more so if the authorities could see their way clear to reverting to the free-for-all rules in the 4×400 (of which more below).

Relays also work best when the results confound the apparent natural order of things. All things being equal, you would expect the team with the four fastest runners to win the 4×100. But it is not the top speed of the individuals which determines the result, it is the speed with which they get the baton around the oval. That is, if they get it around at all. Many is the top team that has dropped a baton, or completed a change outside the zone.

I catalogued some of my favourite relays when looking at last year’s inaugural world re - lays.

The USA all but owned the men’s 4×100 until a Donovan Bailey-led Canada won irst at the 1995 world championships and then again at the Atlanta 1996 Olympics. Jamaica continues the trend of ‘smaller nation beats superpower’ triumphs.

The 4×400 is the drama queen of relays. The Moscow 2013 epic battle between Russia and the USA in the women’s long relay was one example, topped by Antonina Krivovshapka’s holding off Francena McCrory up the inal straight.

And who could forget 400 hurdler Kriss Akabusi out-duelling individual 400 champion Antonio Pettigrew along the inal straight to take the 4×400 gold medal for Britain over the USA in Tokyo in 1991.

That’s relay great 151 A Column By Len Johnson

Then there’s my personal favourite, the dramatic inal change-over at the 1985 World Cup in Canberra in which all but one of the teams was caught up in the pushing and shoving match between Australia’s Darren Clark and the runner for the Soviet Union. Or the aftermath, in which Africa’s Innocent Egbunike – the only runner to avoid the scrimmage – was the only one disqualiied.

The baton was knocked from Egbunike’s hand metres before the inish line as the USA’s Michael Franks came past. Even if oficials could not sort out the numerous protests, they were clear about one thing: in a relay, the baton must cross the line.

The iasco led to a change in the rules with runners having to line up at the changeover in the same order in which their teams pass the 200m mark. The change has uncluttered the second and third changeovers, making life easier for athletes and oficials. As a fan, however, I always loved the physicality of those changeovers. You had to ight for and hold your ground — an essential part of middle-distance running: and what else is a 4×400 if not a middle distance race.

Distance runners lost out in track relays, but have a whole winter season with road and cross-country relays.

It is a cross-country relay which is my absolute favourite and one in which my club team was on the losing side. In 1989, the same year in which he came fourth in the world cross-country over a Stavanger bog, Steve Moneghetti glided over a sea of mud to take over 90 seconds out of our inal runner to lead his BallaratYCW team home irst.

‘Mona’ ran over the ground that day, while others merely battled the mud and slush. The fact he was running for a team lifted him even more. If you had to lose, at least it was to a memorable performance.

That’s relay great 152 A Column By Len Johnson

PRAISE FOR PAULA

Paula Radcliffe made her farewell appearance in last weekend’s London Marathon.

There’s no need to pay further tribute. Her every step along The Mall to the inish outside Buckingham Palace was cheered to the echo.

Radcliffe could scarcely have been more highly acclaimed had she been accompanied either side by Will and Kate. Indeed, quite a few spectators might have asked: “Who are those two running with Paula.”

After inishing in a highly respectable 2:36:55, Radcliffe was presented with the inaugural John Disley London Marathon Lifetime Achievement Award by John Disley himself, co-founder of the race with Chris Brasher in 1981.

Radcliffe’s 2:15:25 world record in the 2003 London race has yet to be approached. She has the three fastest times ever; four of the fastest seven.

For all that, I hope Radcliffe is not assessed purely on times. As a fearless frontrunner in the Ron Clarke mould, she would run fast times, wouldn’t she.

Praise for Paula 153 A Column By Len Johnson

Nor, I hope, is it her fate to be discounted by the failure to win Olympic medals in the long period during which her focus was the track (she won just one silver medal, at 10,000m, at world championship level) and her spectacular ‘dnf’ in the 2004 Olympic marathon, when she was favourite.

A fairer assessment, in my view, sees Radcliffe as an excellent championship runner, even taking account of that long period where she battled unavailingly against the likes of De- rartu Tulu, Gete Wami and other African rivals, Sonia O’Sullivan, Fernanda Ribeiro and others with more dubious reputations.

Had Radcliffe never turned to the marathon, her career would have been book-ended by victories in the world cross-country championships. In Boston in 1992, she won the junior race, defeating China’s future world and Olympic champion Wang Junxia and Kenya’s Lydia Cheromei.

In the short-course / long-course era, she swapped victories with Wami in the 2001 championships in Ostend and won the long race again in Dublin in 2002. Her victory in Ostend, having lost the short race to Wami the day before, is one for the ages. The look of joy on Radcliffe’s face as she gains the upper hand up the long, muddy straight is something to behold.

I was fortunate enough to see three Radcliffe championship runs which I would rank among the best in my experience. Two – the 2002 Commonwealth Games 5000 metres and the Helsinki 2005 world championships marathon – I witnessed irst-hand; the third, her victory in the Munich 2002 European championships 10,000 metres, I watched on television at the Crystal Palace track.

Radcliffe’s performances in the Commonwealth 5000 and the world championship marathon remain the best in those events at any major championship. Her winning time in the European 10,000 has been surpassed only by Tirunesh Dibaba (29:54.66) and Elvan Abeylegasse (29:56.34) in their epic Olympic battle in Beijing 2008.

Radcliffe ran her 5000 on 28 July. Winning a Commonwealth distance gold is no easy feat, anywhere, anytime. Way back, it meant beating New Zealanders such as Peter Snell, Mur - ray halberg, Rod Dixon, Dick Quax or Allison Roe. Overlapping that era, and more recent - ly, it has been African champions from Kip Keino to Mercy Cherono.

Radcliffe faced Edith Masai and Innes Chenonge in Manchester, with only her own self-be - lief as a weapon. Her record of losing after gallant efforts certainly would not have caused Masai to lose sleep.

Praise for Paula 154 A Column By Len Johnson

What did Radcliffe do? After a slow irst kilometre, she gradually increased the pace before accelerating abruptly with four laps to run. She left the Kenyan pair gasping. With two laps to run she was a rough chance of breaking the world record (14:28.09).

At the line, Radcliffe had won by 150 metres in 14:31.42. It remains the fastest international championships run ever. She was supposed to be jinxed in major championships. Hoodoo, schmoodoo.

Nine days later, Radcliffe lined up in Muncih’s Olympic stadium for the European 10,000 metres.

Here is what I wrote for The Age back then:

“My most memorable sporting moment of 2002 — watching Paula Radcliffe win the 10,000 metres at the European championships — began with a forgettable decision.

When the Commonwealth Games closed in a downpour, after one memorable Radcliffe run, it seemed to make little sense to ly to Munich the next day for the European championships.

Instead, I spent a day in rare Manchester sunshine before travelling to London. The next night, I sat in the bar at the Crystal Palace track and watched spellbound as Radcliffe splashed her way around Munich’s Olympiastadion to an even more memorable victory in the European women’s 10,000 metres.

The decision not to go to Munich looked decidedly damp.

In torrential rain, with nothing but her calf-length socks and a few hardy British fans for support, lapping all bar the minor medallists, Radcliffe ran 30:01.09, the second-fastest performance ever and 12 seconds under Ingrid Kristiansen’s European record.

Sonia O’Sullivan, who inished second, hardly knew whether to be pleased with a silver medal and Irish record or dismayed to run a personal-best, yet still be smashed by 300 metres. O’Sullivan was not the only one who did not know how to feel...”

The Helsinki women’s marathon matched the event’s fastest two ever. Radcliffe held the world record: Ndereba was defending champion, the previous world record holder (at 2:18:47) and the Olympic silver medallist.

Not surprisingly, Radcliffe controlled the race, running through half-way in just under 70 minutes. Ndereba was within touching distance until 27km, at which point Radcliffe started to pull away, leading by 30 seconds at 37km, 47 at 40km and winning by 1:04.

Praise for Paula 155 A Column By Len Johnson

Radcliffe’s 2:20:57 was, and remains, the fastest winning time in an international championships (next fastest is Sydney 2000 champion Naoko Takahashi’s 2:21:47 at the Bangkok 1998 World University Games).

The irst four – Radcliffe, Ndereba, Constantina Tomescu and Derartu Tulu — broke the previous championships record.

So, please, let none damn Paula Radcliffe with the faint praise that she was a runner of fast times, but not a championships runner. These three performances, and several more besides, give the lie to that notion.

Praise for Paula 156 A Column By Len Johnson

WHILE YOU SEE A CHANCE

Medals shared the headline, but all that glittered for Australia at the IAAF World Relays was not gold, silver or bronze.

The distance medley relay — DMR for the aiciandos – will never be an Olympic event; nor the 4×800 metres. The women’s 4×400 metres relay, on the other hand, took the far more precious prize of qualiication for next year’s Rio Olympic Games.

While you see a chance — take it.

It was, in every sense, a case of taking the opportunity presented. For the past few years the women’s 4×400 has been the poor relation of the Australian relay program. The men’s 4×400 has built a strong tradition with Olympic and world championships medals and Commonwealth Games victories.

The men’s 4×100 has likewise made inals. Even the women’s 4×100 has looked to have possibilities if three others can be found to get the baton to Sally Pearson in a decent position.

While you see a chance 157 A Column By Len Johnson

The women’s 4×400, though, has been another matter. One glorious victory aside — at the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games with a team containing both Jana Pittman and Tamsyn Lewis and after irst-across-the-line England was disqualiied for lining up out of order at the inal change – not much to show for it.

From the Athens 2004 Olympic Games till 2014, the men’s 4×400 has taken an Olympic silver medal, a world championships bronze medal and two Commonwealth gold med - als, and made another Olympic and world championship inal. The men’s 4×100 has twice been an Olympic inalist and once a world championships inalist.

By contrast, the women’s 4×400 has had the one Commonwealth win and made the oth - er two inals. On the positive side, we have had a women’s 4×400 at ive of the 11 cham - pionships 2004–14, compared with just four for the 4×100.

In any case, the women’s 4×400 went to the World Relays with few expectations. Their coach, Peter Fortune, believed they were a chance of making the inal. Few others did, but as the career-long coach of Cathy Freeman, ‘Fort’ does know a bit about 4×400.

Three of Australia’s squad of six in the Bahamas had not broken 53 seconds – Jess Gulli (personal best of 53.22), Lyndsay Pekin (53.51) and Samantha Lind (53.67). The ‘faster’ three – Caitlyn Sargent (52.16), Morgan Mitchell (52.22) and Anneliese Rubie (52.35) — have never broken 52 seconds.

Taking the four fastest, at their best, that meant a potential time no better than 3:28-something.

But eight of the 16 relay places for Rio 2016 were on the line in the Bahamas. The inalists would be automatically qualiied for the Olympics. That meant for Australia to get one pretty well everyone had to run up to their best time – which is pretty well what happened.

Sargent, Gulli, Rubie and Mitchell combined for 3:30.73 to inish second in the heat and qualify for the inal. Rubie, Gulli, Pekin and Mitchell ran a slightly faster 3:30.03 for seventh in the inal.

The medals may have been the icing, but the women’s 4×400 was very deinitely the cake.

It was a good weekend for Australian athletics, with our middle-distance strength high- lighted by bronze medals in the men’s 4×800 metres (Jared West, Joshua Ralph, Ryan Gregson and Jordan Williamsz) and DMR (Gregson 1200, Alex Beck 400, Williamsz 800 and Collis Birmingham 1600) and the women’s 4×800 (Abbey de la Motte, Kelly Hether- ington, Selma Kajan and Brittany McGowan) and a fourth in theDMR (Melissa Duncan, Lind, McGowan and Heidi See).

While you see a chance 158 A Column By Len Johnson

In addition, Ben St Lawrence (10,000), Madeline Heiner and Emily Brichacek (both 5000) all got world championships qualiiers in the Payton Jordan meeting at Stanford, while Dave McNeill and Jess Trengove ran personal bests in the 10,000.

McNeill missed the Beijing qualiier by an agonising one-hundredth of a second. As consolation, his performance was under the standard for Rio 2016, the period for the 10,000 opened on 1 January, 2015.

Athletics Australia has backed the World Relays concept by sending large teams to the irst two editions (31 in 2014, 37 this year). It is nice to see that pay off with one team qualifying for Rio and medal-winning performances in non-Olympic events.

Like the world cross-country championships, the World Relays has the potential not only to deliver on the day, but also to keep on delivering by developing athletes for the future. Brichacek, Trengove and McNeill all raced hard at the world cross-country in Guiyang just over a month ago to be rewarded with world champs qualiier, personal best and Olympic qualiier at Stanford.

While you see a chance 159 A Column By Len Johnson

LOOK OVER THERE

Politicians love a distraction.

“Look over there,” is the default call when something is happening right here, right now that they would prefer we did not notice. Mug punters quite rightly get mad when they real- ise they have been duped.

Sport, on the other hand, loves a distraction. It’s the things that couldn’t, shouldn’t, or you can’t believe did happen that delight the most.

No sooner is something declared a two-horse race than a wise fan takes out a ticket on the rest of the ield. Surprise and distraction are pretty well staples of the game. The glorious uncertainty, and all that kind of thing.

This is being written in Shanghai on the eve of the annual IAAF Diamond League meeting. Sticking with the punting parlance, it looks London to a brick on that the meeting highlight will be the clash between the world’s best two high jumpers at the moment – Bohdan Bondarenko and Mutaz Essa Barshim.

Look over there 160 A Column By Len Johnson

These two cleared 2.40 metres, or higher, no fewer than nine times between them in 2014. Bondarenko did it ive times, Barshim four. Three others did it once only. So there return to winning heights of 2.40 or higher is down largely to this dynamic duo.

Barshim cleared 2.40 indoors twice earlier in the year; Bondarenko opened his outdoor season with a 2.37 at the World Challenge meeting in Kawasaki last weekend.

Looks a race in two; looks the stand-out event on the program. But I wonder.

For reasons why this might not be so, look no further than the opening Diamond League meeting in Doha on Friday night. With a bevy of track stars across all events, with the sprints, in particular, sure to be boosted by warm weather and a hot track, who would have backed the men’s triple jump to be the highlight.

Yet that’s precisely what happened. We knew Cuba’s Pedro Pichardo was in hot form – a 17.94 metres performance at home proved that. But it was at home and he had a history of not quite living up to that form away. Coming into Doha, four of his best ive competitions had been early season in Havana.

Christian Taylor, on the other hand, had hardly had a jump. The 2011 world and 2012 Olympic champion had opened with a 16.81 at last month’s Drake Relays. Good, but hardly enough to excite expectations.

So what happened – 18.06 for Pichardo, 18.04 for Taylor. The irst time ever two had exceeded 18 metres in the same competition (a lot kinder to Taylor than saying he is the irst man to have jumped 18 metres, and lost). Numbers three and equal-four performers all-time, behind Jonathan Edwards’ world record 18.29 and Kenny Harrison’s 18.09.

That will do for you meeting highlight.

Pichardo and Taylor were, at least, known quantities. What about Jasmin Stowers in the women’s 100 metres hurdles. Until this year, her strongest claim to fame was fourth place in the World Youth Championships in Ostrava in 2007.

In terms of signiicant results, it still is. But 23-year-old Stowers has been on something of a tear since the outdoor season began.

Stowers’ best then stood at 12.71. She kicked things off in 2015 with a 12.54w – nothing special there; but then she went 12.40 at the Drake Relays, 12.39 at the Kingston, Jamaica IWC last weekend and now 12.35 in Doha to turn back another new face in Sharika Nelvis, Tiffany Porter, Sally Pearson and Queen Harrison.

Look over there 161 A Column By Len Johnson

You would be tempted to caution that this is lash-in-the-pan stuff, except two years ago another US hurdler started off on a similar trajectory and followed it all the way through to a world championships gold medal. That would be Brianna Rollins.

Sally Pearson no doubt remembers that, so she won’t be expecting Stowers to taper off any time between now and Beijing 2015 in August.

Pearson lit the fuse with her hurdling in the Daegu 2001 world championships and London 2012 Olympics and explosions have been going off in women’s hurdles ever since.

Stowers and Nelvis, who has improved almost as dramatically this year from 12.71 to 12.54 in Doha, are obviously names to conjure with. Of course, either or both may fail to make it through the cut-throat US Championships to claim places in the Beijing team (though their cause could be helped by the fact that one of world champion Rollins and 2014 DL champion Dawn Harper Nelson can qualify on a wild card).

If they are on the line in Beijing, however, no-one can say they have not been warned.

Going back further, there are countless examples of athletes upsetting the seemingly pre-ordained order of things. Peter Rono upsetting Steve Cram and others to win the Olympic 1500 in Seoul in 1988 comes immediately to mind; more controversially, the performances of Ma’s Chinese Army in Stuttgart in 1993.

Those with an eye for Australian athletics history might opt for Jim Bailey running sub-4 minutes to beat John Landy in front of 40,000 spectators at the Los Angeles Coli- seum on his US tour in 1956; or Marjorie Jackson beating the great Fanny Blankers Koen on her Australian tour in 1949.

So maybe there’s an upset brewing in the Shanghai high jump. Perhaps Zhang Guowei — 2.35 this year already – could produce a boil-over in front of a home crowd.

Just remember, you read it here irst if he does.

Look over there 162 A Column By Len Johnson

THE MAN WHO WORE HIS CLUB SINGLET

H.M.Bateman was an Australian-born cartoonist who had great success in England in the early part of the 20th Century.

Among Bateman’s memorable work was a series of cartoons under the title “The Man Who...”.

As the website www.hmbateman.com describes it:

The majority of the Man Who cartoons describe some terrible social misdemeanour, some sole- cism or offence against accepted custom and behaviour. They contain those repeated descrip- tions of anger, consternation and disgust that became the hallmarks of the Bateman cartoon: eyeballs popping out of sockets, contorted bodies, igures prone or airborne. The protagonist is shown recoiling in horror from his actions and the attention focused on him, or else blithely carrying on, innocent of the outrage he has perpetrated and the world’s indignant roar.

For an example of Bateman’s work, see here. For a gallery of images, see here.

Another Australian, Sam Baines, had his Bateman moment this week in Beijing, becoming The Man Who Ran an International Track Meeting in his club singlet.

The man who wore his club singlet 163 A Column By Len Johnson

Baines lined up in the 110 metres hurdles at the Beijing IAAF World Challenge meeting wearing the strip of Old Melburnians Athletic Club. He was running against the likes of David Oliver, Orlando Ortega and Xie Wenjun who wore the uniforms not of club, nor of USA, Cuba and China, respectively, but of Nike, adidas and Nike.

What on earth can Baines have been thinking? These days nearly everyone at an international meeting runs in sponsors’ kit. Or make that sponsors’ identikit, given that it mostly comes in this season’s colour only.

It is the bane of spectators and media. A middle-distance ield of 15, for example, might see up to 10 runners clad in the same kit. A few — a very few – are household names and easily identiiable; the rest look as if they’ve just come from a police line-up.

The suspect left the scene wearing purple singlet and running shorts: do any of these people resemble the suspect.

I’ve seen the distribution of the kit in action. On meeting eve at a Diamond League a few years back, I watched bemused as shoe company representatives hauled two large card- board boxes into the dining hall and preceded to hand out the same colour shorts and singlet to all ‘their’ athletes running the following night.

Apart from one or two stars, I couldn’t instantly recognise many of the athletes receiving the kit. In race mode the next night, I could identify even fewer.

Ah, you say, but they wear their names on the race bibs these days. Yes, they do, and that’s better in the front-on television shot, but it’s still way too dificult for the normal punter to pick up the names as an 800 ield hurtles around the track.

It’s hard for the race announcer, too, which means less meaningful information is conveyed to the spectators.

Anyway, these are matters for marketing heads to work out. But I’m blowed if I can see that it is good for anybody long-term – athletes, sponsors, meetings and the sport in general – if it becomes more dificult to tell who’s who.

“You can’t tell the athletes without a program” might be a great selling point for programs; but “you can’t (or it is near impossible to) tell the athletes” is hardly a winner for a sport which needs all the positive marketing it can get.

Anyway, back to Sam Baines. There he was, lined up in his OM club strip against some of the world’s best. I can’t say what Sam’s motivation was, but it did take one back to the good old days when athletes ran in either club, state or national uniform whenever they raced.

The man who wore his club singlet 164 A Column By Len Johnson

It’s hard to ind a picture of Ron Clarke racing, for example, other than in a Glenhuntly, Vic- torian or Australian singlet. Ditto for John Landy, except for him it was Geelong Guild, Vic- toria and Australia. Landy broke the world mile record in his club singlet; Clarke beat Ger - ry Lindgren in his classic three-mile world record race at White City in 1965 in a Victorian state singlet.

It made those athletes readily identiiable to a wider public, too, including as role models.

Frank Shorter told me once of the impact Ron Clarke had on him.

“Ron Clarke was my idol. I grew up seeing Ron Clarke in the dark blue singlet with the V on it — to me that was the symbol of running.”

The dark blue singlet with the V on it; the light blue one with the boomerang. A bit more distinctive than the sponsor’s latest pastel worn by more than half the ield.

Others had their funny quirks. Steve Ovett, for example, often ran in a tattered, red Sovi- et Union singlet

Even when the irst ‘pro’ clubs were formed, they stuck to a club singlet. Carl Lewis’s Santa Monica Track Club was one such; here in Australia, there was Melbourne Track Club.

Of course, Ron Clarke was a commercially minded athlete, except large portions of his funds went back to Athletics Australia to establish the Ron Clarke Trust which helped fund overseas competition for other athletes. Had ‘Clarkie’ come along 30 years later he may well have run in sponsor’s kit, but then the Clarke Fund would have been even bigger.

Anyway, whatever the reason, whether or not he ever does it again, it was great to see Sam Baines lining up for a major international meeting in his club singlet. I hope he soon gets a national singlet so he has got a choice of uniform.

The man who wore his club singlet 165 A Column By Len Johnson

QUESTIONS ON NOTICE

It is a standard Parliamentary tactic: when a question is problematic, too hot politically to handle, or you plain do not know – in short, when the responsible minister does not want to answer – you ask that the question “be put on the notice paper.”

Politically, ‘putting a question on notice’ is a device for delaying an undesirable answer. There is at least an implied hope that the answer will not have to be given at a future time, or that the question will have lost its sting by then.

In a sporting sense, putting a question on notice marks the beginning of a process which will produce an answer at the appropriate time. Often as not, the ‘appropriate time’ will be the season’s major championships.

With the international season barely under way, there are already a number of questions on the notice paper. Most will be answered at the world championships in Beijing this August. If not there, then at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

Questions on notice 166 A Column By Len Johnson

Can Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce extend their domination of the sprints; is Kirani James’s rule inevitable; can David Rudisha return to his irresistible, London 2012 form; can Almaz Ayana go to the top of women’s track distance running; can Mo Farah stay there in men’s; is Sally Pearson facing (at least) one US hurdler she cannot beat; has the men’s triple jump replaced the high jump as THE event; will Valerie Adams return from injury to again rule the women’s shot.

It is early days yet, but indications are that the answers are maybe, yes, probably not, yes, probably, maybe, and 2× wait-and-see, respectively.

Not for the irst time, Usain Bolt has started the year slowly. He ‘lost’ the 4×100 to the USA at the World Relays – putting aside the question of how anyone can lose a relay when the damage is done before the baton even gets to them – and ran ‘only’ 20.13 in winning the 200 in cold and rainy Ostrava.

Justin Gatlin, on the other foot, has been hot, starting his campaign with a 9.74 100 in Doha. Apparently, though, this injured him enough for Beijing IAAF World Challenge organisers to suggest he would be better off going home to rest rather than run their meeting. All could be revealed, or not, as the Pre Classic this weekend, at which Gatlin is down to run the 200.

Bolt says he just needs more races. He has plenty lined up. Like Bubka was Bubka, Bolt is Bolt. No-one else is. Write him off at your peril. It all started for Bolt in the Bird’s Nest stadium in 2008; I’m quite sure it won’t end there in 2015.

Fraser-Pryce came to the Shanghai IAAF Diamond League meeting in equivocal form. She had run a good 200 – 22.37, better than at the start of any year – but was facing a loaded ield. Blessing Okagbare-Ighoteguonor won, with Fraser-Pryce ifth.

“It was just one of those races,” SAFP said later. “I have time to get it right.”

Again, you wouldn’t bet against her doing just that.

The continued dominance of Kirani James in the 400 does have a certain air of inevitabil- ity. Still only 22, he looks to have more improvement in him. LaShawn Merritt beat James for the world title in Moscow two years ago, but is struggling for form so far this year. You have to look hard to see others rising to challenge the young Grenadian.

Conversely, we may have seen the best of David Rudisha with that fabulous world record / Olympic gold in London three years ago. After showing good form in Australia, his irst race in Europe saw a ‘dnf’ in Ostrava.

Questions on notice 167 A Column By Len Johnson

Rudisha was quoted saying it was a “minor” leg injury, but too many minors, or a minor at the wrong time, add up to missing a major (championship, that is). His greatest rivals, Mo- hammed Aman and Nijel Amos, are both going round at Pre. Rudisha, too, has time, but...

If seeing is believing, then Almaz Ayana is a shoo-in for the gold medal at 5000 metres at the world champs. Her 14:14.32 in Shanghai was a thing of speed and beauty. Ayana’s teammate, Genzebe Dibaba, ran well indoors, but then again she did so last year before dropping away outdoors. She will need to stay right on her game to beat Ayana in Beijing; any other potential challenger will have to lift theirs.

Mo Farah has ruled men’s track distance running since 2011. Can he extend that reign two more years. History suggests it will be a tough ask – Emil Zatopek, Lasse Viren and Kenenisa Bekele are among the few to have been able to do that in both 5000 and 10,000 at championship level in the past 60 years (Haile Gebrselassie never won a senior world championship or Olympic double).

What gives Mo an undeniable chance is his ability to ind a winning way no matter how the race is run. What makes it harder, is the continual emergence of determined new chal- lengers like Geoffrey Kamworor, the world cross-country champion, whom he meets in Eugene this weekend.

(Our own) Sally Pearson is the victim of her own success. Pearson re-ignited the women’s 100 hurdles with her successes in Daegu and London, forcing her rivals to the realisation that they needed to run sub-12.40 to win the big races. Some – Dawn Harper-Nelson – have responded, others have broken through. Two years ago it was Brianna Rollins who went a little faster than Pearson’s best and took her world title. Now it is Jasmin Stowers, who leads the world this year at 12.35.

Don’t under-estimate Pearson; but don’t under-estimate the job in front of her, either.

What with no-one having gone over 2.40 outdoors (I write pre-Pre), and Pedro Pichardo and Christian Taylor both over 18 metres in Doha, some are saying the men’s triple jump is the new men’s high jump. Let’s wait and see whether Sotomayor’s 2.45 high jump world record goes before Jonathan Edwards’ 18.29 triple mark.

Injury seems to have done what no opponent has to the previously unchallengeable Valerie Adams. Two bouts of surgery have the Kiwi shot putter making a delayed start to 2015 and talking of her main priority as being Rio 2016.

Added to that, rivals Christine Schwanitz and Gong Lijiao have started the year in ‘pb’ (Schwanitz) or near-pb (Gong) form. So is that long undefeated streak of Adams’ under threat. Stand by – but if the NZ shot putter is out there, she will be hard to beat.

Questions on notice 168 A Column By Len Johnson

REQUIEM FOR A RACE

Imitation is the sincerest form of lattery, they say, and the idea of the Ekiden relay has long since gone international.

Well, at least to Victoria, anyway. Athletics Victoria paid homage – or should that be hommage — to the tradition of Japan’s road relays by adding an Ekiden to its winter program some years back. Complete with tasuki, the cloth sash which is worn over, or fash- ionably off, the shoulder and passed from runner to runner.

Now, with the sad news that this year’s Chiba International Ekiden Relay has been cancelled and that the Japanese Federation will no longer stage the annual race it seems that having given the Ekiden to the world, Japan has decided to keep its own versions to itself. The excellent Japan Running News blog records that the cancellation means that “the last vestige of internationalism in Japan’s ekiden circuit is the USA( ) Ivy League alum- ni team at October’s Izumo Ekiden.”

Don’t know about yours, but my dictionary deines a “vestige” variously asa trace, a tiny amount or a particle, so it would seem there is now bugger-all to distinguish the internationalism of Japan’s ekiden circuit from Monty Python’s dead parrot.

Requiem for a race 169 A Column By Len Johnson

Which is a great pity, especially for Australia, which has a proud record over the history of involvement in the Chiba relay dating from its inception as an international race in 1988.

Japan Running News quotes Japanese marathon great Toshihiko Seko as calling the decision “really sad news”.

Seko ran the last race of his career on the inal leg of the 1988 Chiba Ekiden. Hopes of a glorious inale were scuppered by Australia’s Brad Camp who impudently dashed past the great man on the 12.195km leg to grab second place behind Ethiopia.

Australia ielded a decent men’s team — Andrew Lloyd, Mal Norwood, John Andrews and Pat Carroll preceded Camp in the order.

An Australian women’s team inished third. Making up that irst team were Carolyn Schuwalow (just after making the Olympic 10,000 metres inal), fellow Olympic team member Jacki Perkins, Susan Hobson, Lindy-Jane Trezise, Maree McDonagh and Joy Terry.

Competition in Japan offers several advantages to Australians, chiely that although we face a longer journey to get there than athletes from most other countries, Japan is in our time zone.

Ask any Australian athlete how good it is to hear everyone else whingeing about jet lag and the day-for-night time change. And to observe (with just a hint of smugness), “Oh, we have to put up with that all the time.”

Or hearing American and European athletes complaining about the “crazy trafic” on the wrong side of the road. In Japan they drive on the left, just as they do in Australia, so what’s crazy. By Asian standards, Japanese drivers are pretty deferential towards pedestrians, too. So Aussies don’t expend precious mental energy wondering whether crossing the street on each run is going to be the last thing they do.

Australia won the men’s race at Chiba three times between 1988 and 2007 (when Chiba became a mixed-team event). Of course, it also helps to have Steve Moneghetti on the anchor leg.

‘Mona’ has run some great relays for club and country. He reserved two of his ‘very special legs’ to take the 1991 and 1992 men’s teams to victory. Interestingly, those Chiba Ekidens followed Moneghetti’s two most disappointing championship marathons – 11th in the To- kyo 1991 world championships which, in his own sardonic words, was made to look good a year later by a 48th in the Barcelona Olympic marathon.

Requiem for a race 170 A Column By Len Johnson

In both years, the Australian was untouchable on the hilly, 12.195km inal leg, running a course record 34:32 in 1991 and beating that by three seconds faster the following year.

Moneghetti produced another ‘blinder’ in 1997, which broke the bad championship-great Chiba pattern as he had taken the bronze medal in the world championships marathon a few months earlier. His 35:02 charge took Australia from seventh to third.

Before that, Australia had notched its third win in ive years when the team of Rod De Highden, Julian Paynter, Ray Boyd, Robbie O’Donnell and Sean Quilty won the 1995 race.

Australia was second in 1998 and third in 1999 – set up by Andrew Letherby’s 27:55 on the opening (downhill) irst leg – and 2000 before Kenya and Ethiopia started to dominate the men’s race. The two east African nations were aided considerably in ielding strong teams by the number of athletes from both countries running for Japanese schools, col- leges or corporate teams.

The women’s team was not as successful, a third place in 1993 being the only other time it reached the medal dais. The latter team was built around a strong nucleus in future world triathlon champion Emma Carney, Susie Power and Kerryn McCann.

Though many top international runners raced in the Chiba Ekiden it became increasingly hard for organisers and national teams to attract the best runners. Relecting this, and also looking for a promotional angle, the race went to a mixed-team format in 2007 – three men and three women making up a team of six.

In Australia’s case, it likewise became harder to get the top runners to run the longer legs. This was even more acute in the mixed-team format in the two 10km men’s legs make up almost half the marathon distance. Teams with slow runners on these legs are cooked before they start.

The development side was still good for Australia. In the past 10 years Collis Birmingham, Liam Adams, Lara Tamsett, Ben St Lawrence, Jess Trengove, James Nipperess, Harry Sum- mers, Emily Brichacek, Jack Rayner and Courtney Powell either as their international senior debut or very early in their careers.

And, in a neat historical note, Powell, who ran the 7.195km inal leg in what now turns out to have been the last Chiba International Ekiden, is the daughter of Lindy-Jane Trezise, who ran in the irst Chiba International back in 1988.

Footnote: The IAAF sought to build on the success of the Japanese ekidens with its own road relay championship. The irst edition was staged as a World Challenge Relay in Hiroshima in 1986.

Requiem for a race 171 A Column By Len Johnson

Steve Moneghetti, Andrew Lloyd and Adam Hoyle were part of an Oceania team (Dave Burridge and Chris Tobin the NZ members) which inished third behind Ethiopia and Great Britain.

Lorraine Moller, Hazel Stewart, Mary O’Connor, Sue Bruce, Anne Audain and Anne Hare formed the NZ team which won the women’s race from the USSR and the USA, a team that would have been highly competitive anytime, anywhere.

Four championship editions of the World Road Relays were staged from 1992 to 1998.

Requiem for a race 172 A Column By Len Johnson

THE MAN WHO CHANGED THE WORLD

Ron Clarke, who has died at the age of 78, was one of that rare breed who change the world.

Clarke was much more than a runner, of course. Among his lifetime achievements he was a successful businessman, an environmental crusader, mayor of the Gold Coast for eight years, a philanthropist and a devoted family man.

But it is as a runner that Clarke is best known, an thlete,a moreover, who literally changed his event. From the time distance running evolved out of pedestrianism, the English har- rier tradition and onto the Olympic track, he was one of a handful who deined its development.

There was Paavo Nurmi, the greatest of the generation ofFlying Finns, Emil Zatopek, who shattered notions about training and racing hard, Abebe Bikila and Kip Keino, the van- guard of the east African revolution.

And there was Clarke. Clarke showed that distance runners could race hard, race often, race anyone and everyone, but mostly that you could run a hell of a lot faster than had previ - ously been thought possible.

The man who changed the world 173 A Column By Len Johnson

His assault on performance barriers was stunning: in his halcyon days Clarke took almost 40 seconds off the world record for 10,000 metres between December, 1963 and July, 1965 (36 seconds in one race), and 18 seconds off the world record for 5000 between January, 1965 and July, 1966.

Clarke came to record breaking early, setting world junior records during the build-up to the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956. In the epochal race in January of that year in which John Landy ran the irst sub-four minute mile on Australian soil, Clarke set a world junior mile record.

Merv Lincoln inished second in that race, just missing out on a sub-four minute mile himself. Ironically, the result said something about how some came to see the three athletes: Landy on a lonely quest for excellence without real opposition in Australia; Lincoln a ine athlete whose destiny was always to be second-best in his own country, irst to Landy, then Herb Elliott; Clarke a breaker of records rather than a winner of races.

Of course, such slings and arrows of outrageous fortune would be cast at Clarke in later years. Then, he was hailed as a potential champion whose Melbourne Olympic chances were cruelled by his compulsory national service falling due that year. The consolation prize was that he was chosen to carry the Olympic torch on its inal leg around theMCG and to light the Olympic lame.

After 1956, Clarke’s running stagnated and he further put his career on hold while he ac- quired his accountancy qualiications, established himself in working life and married Hel- en, starting a rest-of-life partnership which endured better even than his record-breaking running abilities and produced three children, Marcus, Monique (deceased) and Nicolas.

Returning to the sport in 1961, Clarke quickly re-established himself. His irst world record was set at 10,000 metres (and six mile en route) in the 1963 Emil Zatopek 10,000 metres race. Clarke often joked there were so few people there that he knew most of the crowd.

That set in train the sequence of proliic records and championship failure. Clarke won an Olympic bronze medal at 10,000 in Tokyo in 1964 and silver medals at three miles at the Perth Commonwealth Games in 1962, at three and six miles in Kingston Jamaica in 1966 and at 10,000 metres in Edinburgh in 1970.

To some, it is a damning indictment on Clarke’s career. Harry Gordon, who did not share this view, it must be stressed, wrote:

“It is a fact of his life that the few races Clarke didn’t win during the peak stream of a long and bountiful career happened to coincide with Olympic and Commonwealth Games. So he was naturally branded a loser.

The man who changed the world 174 A Column By Len Johnson

“It’s the Australian way.”

Sadly, there is truth to Gordon’s last observation. I believe it is out-weighed by the view of Clarke as a companion of the post-war generation of sportsmen and women (and writ - ers, artists and performers) immediately preceding him who forged Australia’s reputation on the international sporting stage. The ‘Young Men in a Hurry’, Gordon had styled them in his 1961 book.

Australia then still lacked conidence, taking its cues alternatively from Britain and the USA. Clarke’s record-breaking performances around the world, and his willingness to take on all comers, was in the same mould as the efforts of Landy, Elliott, Betty Cuthbert, Dawn Fraser, our tennis players and our golfers.

Here was an Australian to be proud of. His impact was inspirational.

On me, and on others. Frank Shorter, the American who won the 1972 Olympic marathon and was second in 1976, spoke once of the impact Clarke had on him:

“Ron Clarke was my idol. I grew up seeing Ron Clarke in the dark blue singlet with the V on it — to me that was the symbol of running.”

As for Zatopek, he gave Clarke one of his gold medals. Slipping it into the Australian’s hand as he was about to board a light out of Prague, Zatopek said simply: “You deserve this.”

If that is what the great Emil Zatopek thought, who is anyone else to quibble.

Clarke is survived by his wife, Helen, and sons Marcus and Nicolas. A daughter, Monique, pre-deceased him.

The man who changed the world 175 A Column By Len Johnson

HE DID THE BOOKS, TOO

Fittingly, Ron Clarke has been given many tributes this week. A great runner. A great man. A great loss.

Equally as itting, those tributes have concentrated overwhelmingly on Clarke’s athletic feats. It’s been said so many times, he changed the world in his events. One of the most coherent accounts I have read on this aspect of Clarke’s running was written by Roger Robinson and appears on Running Times.

A very different aspect, however, was mentioned to me by Ron’s great mate, Trevor Vincent. ‘TV’ as he is invariably known, was no mean athlete himself. He won the 3000 metres steeplechase at the Perth 1962 Commonwealth Games, beating England’s Maurice Herriott, who would go on to a silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics two years later (Trevor went on to an Achilles injury, but that’s yet another story).

TV was just as inluential as Clarkie in two of the ‘gangs’ which dominated Victorian, then Australian and then world distance running in that era. A tireless organiser, TV has held many posts during his working and running life, all of them a mere cover to further the goals of Glenhuntly Athletic Club. Vincent was one of the Australians who went to New Zealand and got thrashed by Arthur Lydiard’s Kiwis who could ly, absorbing the competitive and training lessons learned in such a harsh manner.

He did the books, too 176 A Column By Len Johnson

The point Trevor made to me this week was that Clarkie, and the other members of the Glenhuntly / Ferny Creek Gang, were pursuing their athletic careers at the same time as every other aspect of their lives. They were embarking on professional careers, marrying and starting families, involved in their communities.

Commonly, too, they were involved in their clubs. Most elite athletes now still have a club involvement, but it is no criticism to point out that such involvement commonly entails turning out for the club a couple of times a year, or making an appearance at some club function.

Not back then. Clubs were the lifeline of competition. Athletes such as Clarke and Vincent not only ran for their clubs, but they also ran their clubs. An accountant by qualiication, Clarke was in his turn treasurer of his club and also treasurer of the Victorian Marathon Club.

This club involvement, in its turn, made athletes like Clarke more accessible to their club- mates and the broader athletics community. An ordinary member of Glenhuntly or the VMC would have the opportunity to see Clarke race numerous times over the year, much more frequently than you might see a star athlete these days.

My career did not overlap with Clarke’s, but I got the opportunity to run with him and meet him many times. One of the irst I recall was a passive encounter: Ron and Derek Clayton came past me at Caulield Racecourse one night. As I was inishing my run, I resolved to stay as close to them as possible over the last 1200 metres or so.

As close as I could turned out to be an ever-increasing gap which grew to around 100 metres by the time I inished. To cap it off, both were then ‘retired’, though Derek was pursuing the comeback which led him to run the 1974 Commonwealth Games. Worse thing was, I could hear them talking to each other as I struggled for breath.

One of the next occasions I met with Clarkie was after the inal Sunday session of a late 1970s Victorian championships. We had watched Ron’s son Marcus Clarke, among others, running in the 1500 metres at the titles and decided to incorporate our second run into their warm-down. Marcus came into the change-room and asked us if we minded if his father joined us. Did we mind: not one little bit.

Then, in 1983, I believe that Ron, Mike Hurst and I were the only three Australians who were accredited media at the irst IAAF world championships. Ron was working for the BBC and, maybe, Channel 7 as well; Mike was then the athletics correspondent for Syd- ney’s Daily Telegraph, and Neil Mitchell, now the doyen of Melbourne morning radio but then sports editor for The Age, had commissioned me to ile one piece a day on anything I liked for the paper.

He did the books, too 177 A Column By Len Johnson

I witnessed another example of Ron’s humility in Helsinki. Emil Zatopek recently restored from internal exile by the Czechoslovakian government, was allowed to attend as a special guest.

Even back then, the story of Zatopek’s giving Clarke one of his gold medals was widely known and often re-told. But when it came to Clarke’s turn to as the great man a question, he introduced himself by name, not presuming for even a second that Zatopek would remember him, nor that the rest of the media would presume he must remember him.-

Ten years later, when Ma’s Chinese Army astounded the world at the Stuttgart world championships, I rang Clarke from the stadium to get his reaction to what we had just seen. Unlike so many others, Clarke did not assume performance enhancing drugs were the explanation (neither, I think, did he naively rule out the possibility). Pointing to the lack of progress in women’s track running over the previous decade. Clarke’s irst reaction was that women should be running such times.

Hard work, generosity of spirit, appreciation of the human potential: all of these were vi- tal elements of what made Ron Clarke such a rare individual...... and, he did the books as well.

He did the books, too 178 A Column By Len Johnson

ALWAYS MORE QUESTIONS TO ANSWER

No sooner had Alberto Salazar published a comprehensive and detailed reply to the accu- sations levelled against him by the BBC and Pro Publica than some commentators were opining there were still “questions to answer.”

Welcome to the world of those caught in the spotlight in the time of the 24-hour news cycle. It’s like those iendish intelligence tests in vogue in past times, or multiple-choice examinations.

“Don’t worry,” the supervisor would tell us in something meant to resemble a reassuring tone. “You’re not supposed to answer all the questions, just answer as many as you can in the time available.” There were always more questions to answer then, too.

We have a recent parallel in Australian political life, when then Prime Minister Julia Gillard was being quizzed about incidents in her working life as a ledgling lawyer more than 20 years earlier. Gillard sought to deny the issue any further oxygen with a press conference which she allowed to run as long as the Canberra press gallery had questions.

At the end of that, no-one had any more questions to ask. But, guess what? The following morning’s news cycle was again dominated by the view that there remainedquestions to be answered.

Always more questions to answer 179 A Column By Len Johnson

For all the drama of sport, for all its cut-throat competitiveness at times, it is not as important as the politics governing our daily lives. And Salazar’s rebuttal has satisied many with its detail and comprehensiveness. That doesn’t mean, however, that the issue is about to go away.

The main allegations concern what Salazar may or may not have administered to his star US pupil, Galen Rupp. Nothing illegal, he insists vehemently. But his star of stars, Mo Farah, is also drawn in by implication, even if all reports have the routine disclaimer that “there is no suggestion (Farah) has broken any rules.”

Suggestion, or implication, is one thing; inference is another. Inference is in the mind of the perceiver, and the way these things go now, many perceive something dodgy around the Salazar program and, therefore, around both Rupp and Farah as well.

As Steve Cram has pointed out, this is manifestly unfair to Farah. Farah is part of the Or- egon Project, but as a British athlete, with British support and funding, he is also subject to UK Athletics checks. All the relevant people will have signed off on, and presumably monitored, his program (if they have not then, to use another phrase in vogue in Australia this week, heads should roll, heads should roll). As a rolled gold prospect for gold medals at London 2012, you would be amazed if it proved to be otherwise.

Nevertheless, the perception that there is, or has been, something going on here will be hard to shake. One of the consequences of the intense media focus on these matters is that many people make up their minds immediately on publication of the allegations and then are not moved from that view by anything that happens consequently.

Such has been the case with the so-called supplements saga in Australia around the Es - sendon Football Club in the AFL. From the joint federal government / Australian Feder- al Police scene-setting media conference – “the blackest day in Australian sport” – and the self-reporting by the club that there may be problems with its supplements program, many jumped directly to the conclusion that this was a doping case under investigation rather than an investigation into whether there might be a doping case.

Having arrived at that point of view, very few have shifted ground since. Now, having been exonerated by an AFL anti-doping panel (which included two Judges among its three members), the case is subject to an appeal by WADA. It’s not clear what outcome the world anti-doping body is after or what sort of punishment it would seek to apply if successful given the AFL already effectively suspended the club and its players from an entire season by annulling its results and removing it from the inals.

Always more questions to answer 180 A Column By Len Johnson

Let us hope the Salazar case is not headed for this sort of unsatisfactory conclusion (or should that be confusion). There are precedents for non-analytical adverse indings — Lance Armstrong, BALCO – but these have been based on far stronger evidence than has yet emerged in the Essendon case and, at this stage, appears either not to exist or be like - ly to emerge in the Oregon Project case.

Pretty well any investigation into pretty well any allegation will leave questions to be answered. The bigger question is at what stage you conclude that the answers will not take you any further.

Always more questions to answer 181 A Column By Len Johnson

GLORIOUS CERTAINTY OF UNCERTAINTY

In one of his epic rambling songs, Brownsville Girl, Bob Dylan comes up with the line: “The only thing we knew for sure about Henry Porter is that his name wasn’t Henry Porter.”

Along similar lines, the only certain thing we can say about uncertainty is we are certain there is a lot of it about. Especially in sport. Even more speciically, especially athletics.

A few columns back, I pondered some unknowns coming into this world championships season, suggesting that, like dificult political questions, they should be “put on notice.” As we are now about half-way between when the questions were posed and the world championships in Beijing, it might be a good time to see whether we are any closer to having those answers.

On some, we are; on others, we are not. It is no great surprise, then, to ind that there is as much uncertainty now as there was then.

Here’s a re-cap of the problems posed just a few short weeks ago:

Glorious certainty of uncertainty 182 A Column By Len Johnson

men’s; is Sally Pearson facing (at least) one US hurdler she cannot beat; has the men’s triple jump replaced the high jump as THE event; will Valerie Adams return from injury to again rule the women’s shot.

We can be certain about a couple of things. Pearson will not regain her world title in the 100 metres hurdles, will not compete at all in fact after breaking and dislocating her wrist in that horrible fall in Rome.

But we’re no more certain about who will win the women’s sprint hurdles in Beijing, especially after a US championships which turned the established form on its head. Jas- min Stowers, who emerged meteorically in the early part of the season, improving from 12.72 seconds to 12.35, inished only ifth in theUS inal. Barring withdrawals, she will not be in Beijing.

Defending world champion Brianna Rollins fared little better, inishing fourth. But at least she has a champion’s wild-card to use. Favouritism for the gold medal now probably rests on an old favourite, Dawn Harper-Nelson. The 2008 Olympic champion, who also ran Pear- son so close in the London Olympic inal, won the US championship.

And, yes, Usain Bolt is in trouble in the sprints, yielding ground step-by-step as he battles to recover from a pelvic injury. First he withdrew from the Jamaican championships, the line then being that he had never conirmed participation in the irst place. But his sub - sequent pull-out from the Paris and Lausanne IAAF Diamond Leagues indicated the se- riousness of his current predicament.

Bolt is undergoing treatment and remains conident, oficially, of competing in Beijing. The next consideration, however, must be whether doing so would compromise his chances of success in next year’s Rio Olympics. That would leave him on the horns of a dilemma.

In the meantime, the old guard has reasserted itself. Tyson Gay, Justin Gatlin (a spectacular 19.57w at the US champs), even Asafa Powell. But there is also Canadian newcomer Andre De Grasse who pulled off a spectacular 9.75w / 19.58w sprint double at the NCAA championships.

Fraser-Pryce looks a bit more solid in the women’s sprints. After a shocker in Shanghai, the world and Olympic 100 champion returned to top form with a 10.81 win at the Pre Classic and a 10.79 in winning the Jamaican title.

Kirani James continues to go from strength to strength and will be the overwhelming favourite in the 400 while David Rudisha showed his best form since the London Olympics in winning in Eugene in 1:43.58 (he ran faster last year in Monaco, but inished only ifth).

Glorious certainty of uncertainty 183 A Column By Len Johnson

Now, Mo. When last we wrote, Mo Farah was about to win the Pre 10,000 in world-leading time, afirming that he would be virtually impossible to beat at that distance in the world championships.

Then – well then hello BBC Panorama, hello Pro Publica, hello Alberto Salazar. Farah left Britain on the morning of the Birmingham IDL meeting, unable to get himself into the required mental state for a two-mile race. He has since been training at Font Romeu in the Pyrenees.

Write Mo Farah off at your peril, but we should get a good guide to his mental and physical shape as he is due to race over 5000 in Lausanne this coming Thursday then at 1500 in Monaco eight days after that.

Adams? Well she is due to return from injury in Paris on 4 July. A win would restore the natural order; a loss would snap a streak 55 wins long, but that might be a price worth paying if Adams is back to full itness.

Paris will also see the clash of titans in women’s 5000 metres – Ayana v Genzebe Dibaba. The supposed goal is the world record, but this pursuit might be sacriiced in favour of the head-to-head race. Either way, the race looms as a highlight of the meeting.

Summing up: some things look a little bit clearer than they did a month ago, others are just as hard, or harder, to predict now than they looked then.

Which is a good thing. Uncertainty may be a curse in some areas, but in sport it is an un- qualiied blessing.

Glorious certainty of uncertainty 184 A Column By Len Johnson

JUMPING OUT OF THEIR SKIN

We’re a tribe of runners, I know, but sometimes non-running matters command our attention.

It sounds silly to say that Pablo Pichardo and Christian Taylor are taking the triple jump to a new level. After all, the 18-metre mark was approached 30 years ago by Willie Banks (17.97 in the 1985 US championships) and breached by Jonathan Edwards 20 years ago with his fabulous world record 18.29 at the world championships in Gothenburg.

Kenny Harrison of the US won the Atlanta 1996 Olympic title with 18.09 and for all the lurry of 18-metre jumps this year, no-one has yet got past that, much less challenged Ed- wards’ mark.

Yet just as we got excited about Bohdan Bondarenko and Mutaz Essa Barshim inally approaching Javier Sotomayor’s high jump world record last year, or about Renaud Lavillenie breaking Sergey Bubka’s outright world record last year or, just this week, about Genzebe Dibaba running the fastest women’s 1500 metres this century (since 1997, to be precise) with 3:54.11 in Barcelona, so we are entitled to be excited about what Pichardo and Tay- lor are doing.

Jumping out of their skin 185 A Column By Len Johnson

After a brief hiatus, the triple jump was back with a vengeance at the Lausanne IAAF Diamond League meeting, Taylor reversing the result in Doha two months earlier with an 18.08 winner to Pichardo’s 17.99.

The Cuban had beaten the Olympic champion 18.06 to 18.04 at the Doha IDL, the irst time two men had bettered 18 metres in the same competition. Pichardo then improved to 18.08 at home in Havana a few days later and won at the Rome Diamond League with a 17.96.

Of the ive men to reach 18 metres, two – Edwards in 1995 and Harrison a year later, did it 20 years ago; the other three – Taylor, Pichardo and Teddy Tamgho, who jumped 18.04 to win the world championships in Moscow two years ago, have done it in the past two years. Momentum is building, even if the mass is yet to reach the level of the high jump.

Edwards’ world record in Gothenburg was a thing of wonder, for those of us lucky enough to see it. It was one of those few occasions in a ield event where it is obvious the record had gone even before the oficial measurement.

Edwards had been past the 18-metre line four times earlier in that year but on each occasion the following wind exceeded two metres per second. On his irst jump in the inal in Gothenburg, everything fell magically into place. He sped down the runway, he skimmed through the three phases of the jump as smoothly as a stone skipping across the water, and he landed way, way back in the pit, his forward momentum propelling him onto the grass beyond.

That one was 18.16, adding 18 centimetres to the world record he had set earlier in the season. His next jump was even better, Edwards skimming his way to 18.29. This remains the world standard. Twenty years later, we are again seeing men up around that mark.

Anna Chicherova was also back in Lausanne. The London 2012 Olympic champion was one of the hottest of favourites to win at her home world championships in Moscow two years ago, but she was upset by her teammate Svetlana Shkolina, inishing third. As you came up the escalator at the Lenin Stadium stop you went past a succession of ive posters fea - turing Russian gold medal favourites, of which Chicherova was one. None of them won.

Chicherova then took 2014 off for the birth of a child. So far this year, she had looked un - likely to get back to her former best. Her best was just 1.94 in Beijing in May. But in Lau - sanne she cleared 1.97 to clinch the win on a blustery night when no-one else went better than 1.94, then got 2.00 and, on her inal try, 2.03.

Spain’s Ruth Beitia was one of those back on 1.94 in Lausanne. She is also the only other woman to go over 2.00 metres this year. Could we see Chicherova not just back in Beijing, but back all the way to the top.

Jumping out of their skin 186 A Column By Len Johnson

In the men’s javelin, the inlux of fresh faces pushing up to and beyond the 90-metre mark continues. In Lausanne, it was Keshorn Walcott, the young Trinidadian who shocked the world in winning the London Olympic gold medal while still just a few months beyond his 19th birthday.

Walcott produced a 90.16-meter stunner in Lausanne to put the competition beyond the reach of anyone else. He joined others in Julius Yego, Ihab Abdelrahman El Sayed and Qinggang Zhao in rejuventating an event in which long apprenticeships and even longer careers have been the norm.

Kenya’s Yego, who almost snatched a medal at the previous world championships, had produced his own ‘stunner’ at the Birmingham Diamond League meeting last month with a beyond-the-sector 91.56. Yego and Egypt’s El Sayed have both come through stints at the IAAF Development Centre in Kuortane under Finnish coach Petteri Piironen.

Zhao, who is coached by Uwe Hohn, the only man to have thrown a javelin beyond 100 metres (with the old implement), reached 89.15 late last year and will be one of the host nation’s medal chances in Beijing.

As well, ‘older generation’ throwers Tero Pitkamaki and 2013 world champion Vitezslav Ve- sely have thrown 89.09 and 88.18 this year. The competition could yet see someone pushing up towards the legendary Jan Zelezny’s world record 98.48.

It wasn’t all jumps and throws in Lausanne of course. Among other results Mo Farah bounced back with a convincing win in a tactical 5000 metres, Justin Gatlin remained a step ahead of any sprinter currently competing with a 9.75 victory in the 100 and Nijel Amos got past David Rudisha along the inal straight to take the 800, 1:43.27 to 1:43.76.

Jumping out of their skin 187 A Column By Len Johnson

CLARKE NUMBERS STILL ASTOUND

At Ron Clarke’s memorial service at the MCG this week Pat Clohessy handed me a letter.

The letter, dated 13 June 1965, was addressed to Pat, John (Coyle), Tony (Cook) and Trevor (Vincent), all friends and teammates of Clarke’s at Glenhuntly athletics club. It was written three days after Clarke won a two-mile race in Toronto, defeating Ron Larrieu, Olympic 10,000 metres champion Billy Mills, Albie Thomas, Bill Billie and Olympic 5000 champion Bob Schul, and three days before Clarke’s 10,000 metres unoficial world record in Turku.

After describing the Toronto race, Clarke outlines his program in Europe – 13 races, start - ing in Turku and concluding in Berlin one month and a day later. In the event, there were minor changes – the Berlin race was cancelled, as were races set down for East Berlin and Potsdam in the former East Germany (these two replaced by races in Finland).

With the races he had already run in the USA from 29 May, this was the famous 1965 tour which brought 12 world records in 18 races over 44 days. Notwithstanding other great feats – Henry Rono’s four world records in 1978; Coe and Ovett’s revision of the mile and 1500 world records in 1979 and 1980 — in men’s distance running, this was perhaps the greatest, most concentrated, assault on previous standards ever witnessed.

Clarke numbers still astound 188 A Column By Len Johnson

James Coote, then the doyen of English sports writers, summarised Clarke’s tour for Lon- don’s Daily Telegraph, saying he had “made the entire world reconsider the powers of hu - man endurance.”

In a rare editorial on sporting matters, The Guardian said there had never been anything like it in modern athletics: “Clarke’s running has caused a reappraisal, a readjustment, in the approach to running at distances from three miles to 10,000 metres.

“Clarke has achieved a breakthrough of such enormity that it is without equal in the sport.”

Clarke’s records have long since been surpassed. Kenenisa Bekele’s current world record for 10,000 metres is around 1:22 faster than Clarke’s 27:39.4 in Oslo that year; Bekele’s 5000 world record is almost 39 seconds quicker than the Australian’s 13:16.6 set in Stock- holm in 1966.

The numbers that still astound around Clarke – and remain unmatched – are the raw race numbers. He raced faster (relative to contemporary records), more often than any rivals before or since.

As an exercise marking 40 years since Ron Clarke’s 1965 exploits, journalist and statistician Bob Phillips compiled a comprehensive list of his 1965 races. There were 66 in all, ranging from world records in places as diverse as Hobart, Auckland, Los Angeles and Oslo, to club races in Melbourne.

Clarke raced track indoors and out, he raced road and he raced cross-country. As he said on departing Europe in mid-July and repeated on arriving home in Melbourne, he just liked to race.

“I’ll do cross-countries,” Clarke told The Age, “because there’s nothing else to compete in – and I like competing.”

Clarke was not kidding. The very next weekend he ran a 7.2-mile leg of a 50-mile road relay for the winning Glenhuntly team and a week later he defeated Geoff Walker, Cook and Vincent in the Victorian 10 miles cross-country.

As I said, the numbers are compelling. That igure of 66 races, for example. Mo Farah, by way of comparison, has run just 56 races from 2011 – when he irst became the world’s dominant distance runner- until now (based on his season’s statistics for each year on the All-Athletics site).

Clarke numbers still astound 189 A Column By Len Johnson

Another example: back in 2012 as Kenenisa Bekele struggled for form in the lead-up to the London Olympics, he raced a lot more regularly and mostly at 5000 metres. That was my impression at the time, at least. Checking back revealed that, after being outclassed in his season-opening 3000 in Doha, Bekele ran three 5000s in qu ick succession – Shang- hai, Eugene and Oslo – on the way to clinching his Olympic spot with a 27:02 10,000 at the British AAA champs in Birmingham.

Bekele then ran his fastest 5000 of the year in Paris before inishing fourth behind Farah in the Olympic 10,000 metres. Six races from mid-May in Doha to early August in London. Hardly a tour of Clarke proportions.

It would be tempting to berate today’s athletes with not racing often enough, but of course, there are many considerations to take into account. For one thing, many of the meetings Clarke (and Kip Keino, Michel Jazy, Gerry Lindgren and Billy Mills) race in back in the 1960s no longer exist. For another, more-focused training interspersed with racing has undoubtedly been a factor in improved performances.

Against that, not every athlete beneits from intense concentration of their training efforts on fewer and fewer competitive targets. Arguably, only the exceptional ones do.

But it is equally undeniable that we don’t see the stars of athletics compete against each other nearly as often as we would like, and not nearly as often as the star performers in other individual sports like gold and tennis.

Ron Clarke was exceptional, too, so it would be too much to expect athletes to emulate his racing frequency. Maybe not 66 races, then; just something signiicantly higher than the 10–15 competitions which seem to constitute a year these days.

And more of it head-to-head with your toughest opponents.

Clarke numbers still astound 190 A Column By Len Johnson

THE WOMAN WHO BROKE THE WORLD RECORD AT MONTE CARLO

An old English music hall song about a player on a lucky streak at the casino in Monte Carlo ran like this:

As I walk along the Boulevarde With an independent air You can hear the girls declare “He must be a Millionaire.” You can hear them sigh and wish to die, You can see them wink the other eye At the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.

Now I’m quite sure Genzebe Dibaba did not break the IAAF Diamond League bank at Monte Carlo last week, but she certainly hit the jackpot in a big way with a world record in the women’s 1500 metres. And I reckon more than a handful of middle-distance fans sighed, wished to die or, at the very least, winked the other eye.

After a superb job of pacing by US sub-2 800 metres performer Chanelle Price, Dibaba strode out magniicently on her own. Price reached 800 in 2:04.52, Dibaba right on her heels.

The woman who broke the world record at Monte Carlo 191 A Column By Len Johnson

Running virtually 60-second lap pace all the way from there, Dibaba came home in 3:50.07, taking 0.39 off the world record set by Qu Yunxia in China’s National Games in Beijing in 1993. Qu’s was but one of a slew of amazing performances at those Games by members of the squad trained by Junren Ma, the so-called Ma’s Army.

A few weeks earlier, the high-ranking oficers of Ma’s Army – Dong Liu in the 1500 metres, Qu in the 3000 and Wang Junxia in the 10,000 – had been the huge news story from the world championships in Stuttgart. Now, at the National Games, members of the other ranks had their turn to astonish.

The two fastest women’s times ever at 1500 – Qu’s world record and Wang’s 3:51.92 behind her – were run in that Beijing race (they remain two of the fastest ive). The 10 fastest women’s times at 3000 to the end of 1993 were all run in either the heats or inals of the National Games as were the two fastest-ever at 10,000 (Wang’s still current world record 29:31.78 and Zhong Huandi’s 30:13.37 behind her).

The 5000 missed out then, probably because it was two years away from becoming a world championship event, but the 1997 National Games in Shanghai saw similar mass oblit - eration of the previous all-time list at that distance, along with further amazing times at the other distances. It was pretty much the last hurrah for Ma’s Army, which, coinciden - tally or otherwise, faded from view just as the prospect of a Beijing Olympic Games hove into sight on a distant horizon.

For a considerable time after that, there was no progress at the top of the all-time lists. Now if there is one group of people who detest the status quo even more passionately than revolutionaries, it is statisticians.

Statisticians can’t stand stasis. Faced with the Chinese performances stalling progress on the women’s all-time lists, a sub-category was sorely needed. So we say times in these events listed both by their rank both on the world all-time list and on the world, non- Chinese, all-time list.

Elvan Abeylegesse, Meseret Defar and Tirunesh Dibaba have successively improved the 5000 meters world record since 2004 and now, thanks to Tirunesh’s little sister Gen- zebe, the stats-keepers don’t have to worry about a secondist l at 1500. Only Wang’s 10,000 mark remains untouched.

It is to be hoped, too, that the 1500 world record has a liberating effect on Genzebe Dibaba. The third Dibaba sister to make an impact on international athletics, she seems to have laboured under several burdens.

The woman who broke the world record at Monte Carlo 192 A Column By Len Johnson

Sibling rivalry – who would want to be Tirunesh’s younger sister. Genzebe won two world junior cross-country championships and was world junior champion at 5000 metres; Tirunesh was a world champion at 5000 at the age of 18, a bitterly disappointed bronze Olympic 5000 bronze medallist at 19 and a world 5000 and 10,000 double champion just past her 20th birthday.

Then there is the matter of which event for Genzebe. Not the classic 5000 / 10,000 double for her but the more problematic 1500 / 5000. Allied to that has been the further issue of indoor versus outdoor competition. In 2012, she was world indoor champion at 1500, but run out in the heats at the London Olympics and only eighth in the inal at the Moscow 2013 world championships. Her two world championships attempts at 5000 have result- ed in eight place inishes.

Dibaba could do either the 1500 or 5000 in Beijing. Or she could do both. For her own sake, it is to be hoped she does at least one of them very well.

Monaco kept up its (very recent) tradition of (very fast) men’s 1500s as well. For all his great races – two world championship victories and one Olympic gold medal – Asbel Kiprop can be an exasperating fellow to follow. Predictably unpredictable, I called him last year.

In the Stade Louis II stadium last Friday, Kiprop was simply unbeatable. Facing a packed ield – his great Kenyan rival, Silas Kiplagat, was the most signiicant absentee – Kiprop clung to the pacemaker as Mo Farah became the de facto rabbit for the rest of the ield.

Pushing through a third lap where he has often seemed to lose concentration, Kiprop had a lead of over 20 metres at the bell. Maintaining almost all of his pace and almost all of his form, he raced home in 3:26.69, making him the third-fastest man ever behind only Hi - cham El Guerrouj (3:26.00) and Bernard Lagat (3:26.34). Olympic champion Taouik Makh - loui was second in 3:28.75 and Abdelaati Iguider (3:28.79).

Farah inished fourth in 3:28.93, his second time of 3:28 in two Monaco starts.

With little-known Amel Tuka defeating Nijel Amos (2 nd) and Mohammed Aman (8th) to win the men’s 800 in 1:42.51 there were three superb middle-distance events on this warm Monaco evening. If the bank remained unbroken, it was not for want of trying.

The woman who broke the world record at Monte Carlo 193 A Column By Len Johnson

REVIS(IT)ING HISTORY

Michael Gleeson’s story in The Age last weekend about Athletics Australia seeking retro- spective Olympic medals for triple jumper Ian Campbell and sprints and hurdles legend Shirley Strickland deservedly sparked huge interest.

Briely put, Campbell was denied a possible gold medal by a contentious judging call that he had fouled an attempt which clearly landed beyond the Olympic record (17.39 metres) and would have stood up as the winning jump (the gold medal was ‘won’ with 17.35).

Detailed analysis of video footage shows that the jump was deinitely further than the winning distance and reveals no incontrovertible evidence of ‘scraping’ – the trailing foot scraping the ground as it comes through in the step phase — the foul for which Campbell was called.

The case for Shirley Strickland is, on the one hand, clear-cut. Discovery and examination of the phot-inish back in 1975 shows that she, rather than the oficial bronze medallist, inished third in the 200 metres.

Unfortunately, on the other hand it is clear as mud. Judging then was done by the judges on the line, with no allowance made for new-fangled technology like photo-inish equip- ment, which was not fully used for timing and results until Tokyo in 1964.

Revis(it)ing history 194 A Column By Len Johnson

In light of these ambiguities, Athletics Australia is urging the IAAF to seek to have additional medals awarded by the IOC rather than to amend the originally declared results. Revisit rather than revise.

The story revived some personal memories, the irst my recollection of an unrecorded conversation with Shirley Strickland in 1986 on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the Melbourne Olympic Games.

Strickland won seven Olympic medals – three gold, one silver and three bronze – in her career. That was then the most by any woman athlete. Until the inal day of the Sydney 2000 Olympics, she was tied with Irena Szewinska and Merlene Ottey for most Olympic medals won in women’s track and ield. Ottey broke the tie when she got a bronze medal with the Jamaican 4×100 relay.

The medal in the London 200 would have given Strickland eight. After we had inished talking about Melbourne 1956, I asked her what her reaction was to the ‘missing’ medal. To my surprise, Strickland was not fussed at all, certainly not to the extent of supporting any efforts to redress the situation.

To my present horror, the tape had long been turned off and I had even ceased taking notes. So I can’t be certain whether Shirley Strickland made me aware of the signiicance of the bronze medallist or whether our conversation prompted me to further research.

Audrey Patterson, the athlete judged third across the line, was the irst black American woman to win an Olympic medal. She was an early member of the famed Tigerbelles, the dynasty of athletes at the University of Tennessee which produced 1960 Olympic dual sprint gold medallist Wilma Rudolph. The lot of Patterson and her teammates included driving long distances to meetings in the coach’s station-wagon, often sleeping in the when they could not get into segregated motels.

Patterson’s signiicance would have sat well with Strickland, a very politically aware and astute woman. Perhaps that was the reason she accepted the judges’ decision as inal, never complaining at the time or subsequently.

Campbell’s case is a stark contrast. While the London 1948 Games took place in an atmosphere of international optimism and goodwill a few years after the end of catastrophic world war, the Moscow 1980 Olympics were held at one of the chilliest periods of three decades of the Cold War. The USSR had intervened in Afghanistan, US President Jimmy Carter had unilaterally called for an Olympic boycott – taking even loyal allies such as Australian PM Malcolm Fraser and West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt by surprise — and hostility and suspicion abounded.

Revis(it)ing history 195 A Column By Len Johnson

Not surprisingly, there were myriad stories of political and sporting skulduggery by the Soviet government and the oficials. Many were Cold War fairytales. The tale of the stadium doors opened to give the Soviet javelin throwers a favourable tailwind, for example, lost some of its sting when it was revealed that the javelin model in use of the time was designed to ly further into a slight headwind. Which does not make the story untrue, of course, but at the least suggests the conspirators were inept, as much hindrance as help.

It is easier to rig a triple jump competition. All you have to do is hold up a red lag. The circumstantial evidence is strong that this is precisely what happened to two of the favourites, Campbell and Brazil’s Joao Carlos de Oliveira, the world record holder.

Campbell was called for no fewer than ive fouls, having just one legal jump in the inal. De Oliveira had four called against him, two of which observers judged to be around 17.50.

Here’s what respected Finnish sports statistician and journalist Matti Hannus wrote: “The incidents in this competition will certainly be talked about as long as there is something written about the history of the athletics... we can only say that it was lottery and dubious judging that produced the results – and that they are inal”(The 1980 Olympics: Track and Field; 1980).

And Mel Watman in Olympic Track & Field History (2004): “The result of the triple jump shows that Estonian Jaak Uudmae won ahead of Soviet colleague Viktor Saneyev . . with Brazil’s Joao Carlose de Oliveira, Britain’s Keith Connor and Australia’s Ian Campbell next. However both Campbell and de Oliveira were, in the view of expert observers, robbed of possible victory.”

Will anything happen now. It remains to be seen, but it will clearly be dificult to overturn a judge’s decision on the day without very compelling evidence. Australia is rightly making the case for Ian Campbell; hopefully, evidence likewise exists to enable Brazil to mount a similarly strong case on behalf of de Oliveira.

Revis(it)ing history 196 A Column By Len Johnson

THE FIRST WORLD CHAMPS IN ASIA

The humidity descended as if someone had dropped a heavy cloak around your shoulders.

That was my irst impression of Tokyo in 1991 at the irst world championships staged in Asia. It was the end of summer and the moment you stepped outside the air-conditioned hotel lobby it felt as if you had just stepped into a sauna. It didn’t help that we had just come from a Melbourne winter.

Beijing 2015 will be the third world championships staged in Asia in the past eight years, following Osaka 2007 and Daegu 2011. The 2008 Olympic Games were held in Beijing and the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. Tokyo had already hosted the 1964 Games – the irst sum - mer Olympics hosted by an Asian city.

But I had not been to any of those events. I covered the Seoul Olympics remotely from The Age ofice in Melbourne – the 100 metres inal, which we thought dramatic until the aftermath of the Ben Johnson positive went off the drama scale – was shown on the score- board at half-time in the AFL grand inal.

All of which made that irst step outside the hotel door in 1991 such a stupefying experience. I remember wondering how anyone could run a distance race in such conditions – much less a marathon.

The First World Champs In Asia 197 A Column By Len Johnson

This state of mind was not assuaged by the sight of Rose Mota sitting in the gutter a few days later. Our hotel was on the marathon course near the 25km point. The reigning Olympic, world and European champion had gone past with the leading group and next time we saw her she had pulled out. The main athletes’ hotel was just behind ours and after gathering her thoughts she trudged wearily up the hill to her team lodgings.

It turned out Mota had been suffering stomach pains, so maybe the conditions were not the sole explanation for her plight. Nevertheless, her fate seemed emblematic.

From Mota to Mona. A week later it was the men’s turn to brave the conditions and Steve Moneghetti was one of the favourites. In the irst days of the championships radiant sun was never a problem. Cloud enveloped Tokyo pretty well all day every day, producing the suffocating humidity. A typhoon late in the week cleared the air. Men’s marathon day dawned clear – and sunny.

This time we travelled to the stadium for the race. I remember sitting in the open stand in the back-straight for the 6am start. Already it was 26deg.C and the humidity was over 70 percent. We were forced to retreat into the shade as soon as the runners left the stadium.

A tough race, in tough conditions, won by a tough athlete in Japan’s Hiromi Taniguchi in a tick or two under 2:15. Mona ran what we thought at the time was a disappointing 11th. In retrospect, it was a pretty gutsy performance.

It was the start of a decade or more of championships staged mostly in extreme conditions. Tokyo 1991 was followed by Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996, Athens 1997, Seville 1999, Athens 2004, Osaka 2007. Amongst these hot-holes, Gothenburg 1995, Sydney 2000 and Paris 2003 were like oases.

Athletes also got better at dealing with the conditions. Moneghetti’s best championships marathon result came with his bronze medal in Athens in 1997 on a hot day and on a course with no hint of shade and a second half tougher than the irst.

If it was brutal for marathoners, Tokyo 1991 was good for some. Carl Lewis regained the world record in the 100 metres with a win in 9.86 seconds over teammate Leroy Burrell but was powerless to stop Mike Powell winning the long jump with 8.95 metres, breaking Bob Beamon’s legendary world record set at the Mexico City 1968 Olympics.

Conditions helped them. It subsequently was revealed that the Tokyo track exceeded IAAF benchmarks for hardness, making it a sprint speedway par excellence. And the long jump was held in the freakish pre-typhoon lull, with the low barometric pressure acting in a manner roughly comparable to being at altitude.

The First World Champs In Asia 198 A Column By Len Johnson

Four women inished within 0.13 seconds in the 800 metres with Lilia Nurutdinova winning in 1:57.50 from Ana Quirot (1:57.55), Ella Kovacs (1:57.58) and Maria Mutola (1:57.63).

Marie-Jose Perec announced herself as a great 400 talent with a win in 49.13 and Liz McColgan, so often beaten by faster inishers in less arduous conditions, also epitomised the tough-conditions-tough-runner syndrome with a win in the women’s 10,000 metres.

Yobes Ondieki blitzed the 5000 metres ield early, running 4:02.46 from laps two to ive, and held on for a memorable victory while a rising young star named Michael Johnson likewise thrashed the 200 ield to run 20.01 into a signiicant headwind.

The women’s long jump did not reach world record distances like the men’s, but did see an absorbing duel between the two best jumpers in the world. Jackie Joyner-Kersee produced a best distance of 7.32 to prevail narrowly from Heike Drechsler’s 7.29.

And Sergey Bubka reached the half-way point of his string of six consecutive world titles, taking his third pole vault gold medal with a championship record 5.95 metres. Battling an Achilles tendon injury which required painkilling injections both before and during competition, Bubka was in seventh place as he lined up for his second, and inal, attempt at the winning height. He soared over to win.

Istvan Bagyula, who had looked to have the gold medal in his pocket, commented rueful- ly: “It’s not possible to beat Sergey at the moment.”

They would be saying that at three more world championships yet.

The First World Champs In Asia 199 A Column By Len Johnson

IT’S YOUR DAY

History is written by the winners, they say. Even if that is true, it doesn’t follow that all winners get to write history.

History is written by some winners. When we think great achievers at world championships or Olympic Games, we almost instinctively turn our minds to multiple medal winners or to those who produce one truly great performance in taking a gold medal.

Think Jesse Owens, Fanny Blankers-Koen, Emil Zatopek, Betty Cuthbert, Peter Snell, Lasse Viren, Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt in the irst category. All won multiple medals at one or more Olympic Games. Lewis and Bolt have also achieved that feat in the world championship era, an opportunity that was not open to the others.

The astounding performance. Think of Australia’s Herb Elliott and Ralph Doubell and their one-off Olympic victories in world record times, or of Bob Beamon’s spectacular world record in the long jump in Mexico City, not to mention Mike Powell’s breaking of that record 23 years later in the Tokyo 1991 world championships.

Others that come to mind include Joan Benoit’s runaway win in the irst women’s Olympic marathon in Los Angeles in 1984 or Sammy Wanjiru’s combative and combustible performance in winning the men’s marathon in Beijing in 2008 in Olympic record time.

It’s your day 200 A Column By Len Johnson

We’ve all got our own lists, longer the more challenged you are by age.

A common thread linking most of those mentioned is that they all had signiicant careers, Some, like Elliott’s undefeated record at 1500 metres / mile, were short but coruscatingly brilliant. Others, like Wanjiru’s, were cut tragically short.

Many of this kind of athlete gets to write their own history (or have it ghost-written by others).

Still others – including some of my personal favourites – were something of one-hit won- ders, athletes who produced the performance of a lifetime on a particular day. For these athletes, a world or Olympic title was a single outstanding achievement in a career lack- ing otherwise in highlights.

Not so much, this is your career, this is your year as this is your day.

As we are on the eve of a world championships, let’s start there, at the very irst world championships in Helsinki in 1983, in fact.

One of my favourites there was Helena Fibingerova in the shot put. Now the shot is not normally one of the events that grab us distance people, but Fibingerova was impossible to ignore.

The event was held in the middle-to-late part of the championships, which were hit by soaking rain. Fibingerova was not fancied over the formidable East German and Russian throwers, but she produced a last throw of the competition effort of 21.05 to leap from ifth to irst. Knowing she had won as soon as the shot landed, she set off on a victory lap pausing to hug every oficial in sight.

Willi Wulbeck in the 800 metres was another unlikely winner. A perennial inalist, he was never a winner until he burst from ifth to irst down the inal straight to defeat Rob Drup- pers and the man who would become 1984 Olympic champion, Joaquim Cruz. The look of wonder on his face as he crossed the line still stays in the memory.

Eamonn Coghlan is a slightly-squared peg to hammer into the ‘day of your life’ hole, but he has to get there with his premature celebration of certain victory as he came off the inal bend in the 5000 metres behind the USSR’s Dmitry Dmitriyev, a man bereft of a inishing kick.

Coghlan was all smiled out by the time he actually crossed the line. Dmitriyev, proving that he indeed was a man with no kick, actually dropped out of the medals as Werner Schildhauer and Martti Vainio also got past him.

It’s your day 201 A Column By Len Johnson

Helsinki 2005 produced a one-off winner in the men’s pole vault. Again, another rain- affected competition which was won by Dutch journeyman Rens Blom at 5.80 metres. The lifetime personal best average of the inalists was 5.95, so this was something of a surprise, the like of which Blom had neither produced before, nor would again.

This had some resonance with Helsinki 1983 which also produced a shock winner in So- viet teenager Sergey Bubka, but he rather demolished any ‘day of his life’ thinking by also winning the next ive world titles.

The women’s 10,000 in Athens in 1997 produced a surprise winner in Sally Barsosio of Kenya. Four years earlier she had taken a bronze in Stuttgart in a race in which the tall, ungainly Kenyan youngster was barracked for interfering with other runners, most notably South Africa’s Elena Meyer.

She had done little to suggest she was a gold medallist in the waiting, but Barsosio won in tough, hot conditions.

Jong Song-ok, winner of the women’s marathon in Seville in 1999, was the quintessen- tial ‘day of her life’ winner. Unknown outside her native North Korea, not even the number one entrant for her country, she produced a strong inish (74:30 / 72:29) to take the gold medal in outrageously hot conditions.

There will almost certainly be a winner in Beijing in the next nine days who will it neat- ly into the ‘day of your life’ category.

Naturally, we don’t know who it will be right now. But you can probably forget about inding their book in the history section 20 years from now.

It’s your day 202 A Column By Len Johnson

... IF HE WAS THINKING AT ALL

What on earth can Jesse Norman have been thinking – if, indeed, he was thinking at all.

Jesse Norman MP, is the Conservative chairman of the culture, media and sport select committee in the British House of Commons. His ‘if he was thinking at all’ moment came at a committee hearing last Tuesday (8 September) when he suggested while question- ing a UK anti-doping oficial that London Marathon winners and medallists and “potentially British athletes” were under suspicion.

As Paula Radcliffe is the only British winner or medallist (aside from in the wheelchair race) since 1996, this immediately appeared to put her in the frame. She reacted accord- ingly, coming out to defend her name and has been backed by former athletic greats in newly-elected IAAF president Sebastian Coe and Steve Cram.

Attempting to put out the ire on which he had just emptied a can of petrol, Norman then gave a BBC Radio 4 interview in which he denied implying Radcliffe was under suspi- cions and claimed to be a “massive” fan.

... If he was thinking at all 203 A Column By Len Johnson

“I certainly massively admire Paula Radcliffe, I grew up on tales of her extraordinary exploits in the 90s and early 2000s, and nothing could be further from the intention of the committee than to have named any athletes. In fact no names were given, no allegations were made, no speciic athletes were described, no test results were mentioned.”

So far, so not-too-bad: having worked full-time in media for over 20 years and part-time since retirement in 2008, I know that it is the role of journalists covering hearings of all sorts – courts, arbitration proceedings and parliamentary committees – to pick out the newsworthy bits among a huge volume of evidence.

Most journalists would acknowledge that this emphasis on the ‘news’ occasionally leads to a partial view of the full proceedings. Those who perceive themselves to have suffered from this news-based approach invariably claim to have been “taken out of context.” See- ing few readers will have the interest or stamina to explore full transcripts of hearings, this usually muddies the waters suficiently.

Jesse Norman went to this approach in his Radio 4 interview. Saying it was not his intention to implicate any individual athlete, he went further, accusing media of acting as a “press pack” in taking a “single snippet” from the committee hearing and using it to “bounce” a statement out of Radcliffe.

That’s where he loses me — and just about everyone else, from the reaction. If the chair of a House of Commons select committee does not have the knowledge of athletics, or the political nous, to grasp that a statement seemingly capable of being applied to one British athlete only does not in effect name that athlete, then he or she is palpably way out of their depth.

The correct course for Jesse Norman would have been to have admitted his question was, at the very best, clumsily worded, and to withdraw any implication against Radcliffe. In- stead, he compounded the initial damage by attempting to lay the blame elsewhere.

As another media commenter tweeted: “If Jesse Norman really thinks he didn’t out Radcliffe to anyone with a brain, either he is very stupid or he thinks everyone else is.”

Perhaps Norman should just have come out and claimed that he wasn’t really thinking of anything at all.

Radcliffe and Mo Farah have been the greatest two British distance runners of recent times – arguably, all-time – and now both have been the subject of innuendo this year.

... If he was thinking at all 204 A Column By Len Johnson

This latest furore over Radcliffe comes just months after the Alberto Salazar allegations which, by association, implicated Farah. Both have been put in the invidious position of having to prove their innocence, which is, of course, impossible.

In coming out in her own defence, Radcliffe has explained three abnormal blood tests by saying two were taken immediately after races and were, therefore, invalid and all three came after periods of gruelling training at high altitude. Both the IAAF and WADA have supported her characterisation of the test results.

This is the very reason why the Biological Passport was introduced, to rule out one-off ab- normalities in favour of establishing a consistent pattern of blood values against which results can be tested. To have the raw data leaked and then ‘analysed’, can surely only lead to a distorted view.

To follow up by asking athletes who have returned abnormal results to “prove their innocence” is, as Radcliffe has suggested, a form of blackmail.

Farah, at least, has been able to do the one thing the retired Radcliffe no longer can – he has won important races. His double victory at the world championships in Beijing had people talking about him again, this time for all the right reasons.

In the end, it is all you can do as a sports fan. Admire the best athletes when they lift us up – and hope they never let us down.

... If he was thinking at all 205 A Column By Len Johnson

MARATHON MUSINGS

Maybe it’s because I’m from Melbourne where the AFL media bubble is such a humun- gous beast that it makes the elephant in the room look miniscule. Or maybe it’s because we are only a couple of weeks on from a ‘local’ world championships in Beijing.

Then again, maybe it’s because I just wasn’t paying attention, but the Sydney marathon has kind of snuck up on me this year.

The marathon is on, in any case. More precisely, it’s on as part of the Blackmores Sydney Running Festival which now attracts over 30,000 participants across distances ranging from a 3k walk to the full 42.195km classic. The race is on free-to-air television, and it also incorporates the Australian marathon championship.

The marathon is the last remaining legacy event of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. This was not such a great selling point in the early years when the race ran from the northern side of the Harbor Bridge to the Olympic Stadium at Homebush.

Fair enough, this was where the Olympic Games were held, but running away from one of the most scenic inner-city precincts in the world never made that much sense, and even less when the course had more than its share of testing undulations (hills) plus a section of open, soul-destroying freeway.

Marathon Musings 206 A Column By Len Johnson

Moving back to the inner-city was a winning move. For a start, it enabled the race to take in iconic parts of Sydney which the run to Homebush missed – the Rocks precinct, the inish at the Opera House, etc. For another it made the logistics easier, conining the race to a much more compact area. With Gold Coast and the revived Melbourne marathon, Australia now has three marathons of international standard. Gold Coast and Sydney are IAAF Gold Label races, Melbourne is Melbourne (sorry, bias showing). That gives Australian runners more local choices when looking for suitable races in which to chase championship qualifying times. I hope more of them take advantage. In recent times, Liam Adams, Sinead Diver and Sarah Klein all got Glasgow 2014 qualifying times in Melbourne; Gold Coast has delivered qualifying times since its early days when the likes of Peter Mitchell, Pat Carroll, Jillian Colwell and Brad Camp ran their way into various teams. The Gold Coast race is in the middle of the northern hemisphere summer, when no-one but major championship organisers would think of holding a marathon, but the timing of Sydney and Melbourne give two major Australian marathons a presence in that (north - ern hemisphere) autumn marathon season running all the way from Berlin (next weekend) to Fukuoka (irst weekend in December) via such stops as Chicago , Frankfurt, Am- sterdam and New York. I don’t know about you, but I ind that exciting. Likewise seeing all those television chan - nels who won’t show even a 1500 in full, much less a 5000 or 10,000, suddenly devoting three to four hours to a mass-participation marathon. While on a marathon roll, (at least) two interesting points arose out of the world championship marathons. The irst concerned the two races themselves. Exciting, or humdrum? It seems a no-brainer when you think about the women’s race – irst two separated by a mere second, irst four athletes within seven seconds, ive athletes in contention at 40km. Well, yes, the inish was exciting and could have been the irst, and only, time that an athlete’s line into a corner cost them a gold medal. It was hard to fathom why Helah Kiprop went wide as she and Mare Dibaba swung round an advertising hoarding and onto the track. With a straight run in of only 90 metres, it was not the time to give up even a metre to an opponent. More than that, though, was the nagging doubt that the last 100 metres was so close only because no-one had tried a decisive move in the previous 42,095 metres. In Daegu and Moscow it was Edna Kiplagat who powered away in the last stages of the race. This time, in far less oppressive conditions, she was unable to mount such a move and no-one else tried.

Marathon Musings 207 A Column By Len Johnson

The men’s race was even less adventurous. Until its inal few kilometres it was always led by someone whom you could never imagine winning it. Though it was a clear and sunny morning, conditions were no more oppressive (probably considerably less so, in fact) than when Sammy Wanjiru ran his incredible race to an Olympic gold medal. None of the favourites gave a yelp. In the end, Ghirmay Ghebreslassie was a wonderful winner – not yet 20, Eritrea’s irst world championships gold medallist – but you would have liked to see more initiative shown at some stage of the race. No Australian ran the men’s marathon – disappointing enough in itself. The Olympic qualifying time is 2:17 (men) and 2:42 (women) and Australia is likely to send every qualiied athlete it can. There was also the possibility of qualifying as a top-20 inisher, regardless of time. Twentieth position in the men’s race went in 2:20:35, in the women’s it was 2:36:17. Congratulations then to Diver, Klein and Julie Degan who (a) ran the race, and, (b) to Diver and Klein again for achieving the qualifying time for Rio. Neither was in the top 20 but Diver was twenty-irst in 2:36:38, Klein twenty-third in 2:37:58. These two have already set the Australian selectors their irst poser. Two athletes have qualiied in what is surely the most important race of the qualifying period. Traditionally, Australia has placed great value on qualifying performances done under championship conditions. So with Diver and Klein qualiied by time and Lisa Weightman and Jess Trengove very likely to join them, it seems that in women’s marathon, at least, there will be selection deci- sions required. Hopefully, there’s a few more events where the same will apply. The more work selectors have to do, the healthier the sport.

Marathon Musings 208 A Column By Len Johnson

TRIUMPH IN A CRUMPLED HEAP

Barely a minute after the start of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games women’s 400 metres, Cathy Freeman was sitting in a crumpled heap on the track.

This was scarcely the pose you would expect of a gold medallist, but it was all Freeman had left after defying one of the heaviest loads of expectation experienced by any athlete in history.

Consider this list of horrors. The face of the Games: check. Carrying the banner for in- digenous Australians: check. Carrying the banner for all Australians: ditto. Lighter of the Olympic Flame: check. Drenched in the process by errant fountain spray: check and double-check. Sick in her inal build-up: check.

Oh, and not to forget, an overwhelming favourite for her event and seen almost universally as “Australia’s only chance of a track and ield gold medal.”

No other incident more starkly deined this pressure than the response Michael Knight, NSW Minister for the Olympics, gave when he said the athletics schedule would not be changed to a nine-day program, meaning those who had bought a ticket for the women’s 400 inal night would, in fact, get to see the women’s 400 inal.

Triumph in a crumpled heap 209 A Column By Len Johnson

The minister’s take on this was that he had protected the Australian public’s right to come along on 25 September to see Cathy win her gold medal. No need for anyone else to pile on the pressure then!

Freeman deied it all to win decisively in front of an Olympic record 112,000 fans. Millions more watched on television in venues from outback community halls, to pubs and large screens erected in Sydney’s Darling Harbour, Melbourne’s Federation Square and pretty well every other major public space round the country.

Australia may not have 1.3 billion people, but on a per capita basis there just might have been more interest in Cathy Freeman’s Olympic 400 metres inal than in any race of Liu Xiang’s career.

Can it really be 15 years ago to the day (Friday). At times it seems like yesterday, at other times another lifetime.

The medal came on top of a tumultuous year for Freeman. Her drawn-out personal and business split from Nic Bideau came to a head as they attempted to resolve their management issues. Freeman ran well in the domestic season but things seemed to be in chaos when she got to Europe – a perception further fuelled by media stories.

To be sure there was smoke – a training partner virtually turned round and left the moment he arrived at Freeman’s training camp in Bath. The trip to her irst race in Italy turned into a drawn-out drama involving trafic jams, a delayed light, landing in the middle of a thunderstorm and a belated dash to the track. Lost in all this was the fact that she won the race.

There were so many predictions of imminent disaster that is was something of a relief to arrive in London to ind there was no ire. Freeman was in good spirits and focused very much on the job in hand even if the message iltering back to Australia was of a cam - paign in tatters.

Over the next few days I ielded lengthy phone calls from Fairfax colleagues in Australia, from my sports editor, and from Nic – all pushing the line that things were falling apart. I spent 30 minutes on the phone to the ofice from the car park of the team hotel near Heathrow.

Another half-hour went by in conversation with a senior Fairfax journalist while I waited for a train at Clapham Common station. It is London’s busiest station, connecting major east-west and north-south lines. I could tell this was so from the number of connecting trains I let go by as the conversation went on, and on.

Triumph in a crumpled heap 210 A Column By Len Johnson

The European ‘crisis’ averted, Freeman continued to train well and race undefeated until coming home. She had opted to stay in Melbourne until the last possible moment, a well thought-out plan threatened with derailment when she caught a cold in Melbourne’s spring ‘warmth’ and lost her voice. Freeman survived that, the Opening Ceremony and drenching and everything her opposition could throw at her (though the only thing defending champion Marie-Jose Perec threw in was the towel, leeing Sydney within 48 hours of her arrival claiming to have been stalked by an intruder in her hotel of whom, mysteriously, there was no corroborat- ing trace). I loved her line several years later to Ray Martin about the hiccups in the ceremony. Sure- ly they must have annoyed her, he asked. No, said Freeman. “I told myself: I’ve come here to win a gold medal in the 400 metres, not to light the Olympic cauldron.” And win it she did, even if her irst reaction was, understandably, to sit down on the track in a heap. She had coped with the pressure without missing a beat. It was its release which left her, for a few moments, unable to stand. The women’s 400 was almost the mid-point of an unforgettable night with nine inals, the sort of session that no longer exists on the championship schedule because the rest day has disappeared. Michael Johnson won a men’s 400 that went by almost unnoticed in the aftermath of Freeman’s win (I still can’t believe that happened, but it did). Maria Mutola won an Olym- pic 800 gold at her fourth try after an epic battle with Stephanie Graf and Kelly Holmes. Paul Tergat stunned Haile Gebrselassie tactically by sitting until the last 200 metres of the 10,000 before unleashing his own inishing kick. Ultimately, Gebrselassie prevailed by inches in a race he regards as his inest ever. The winning margin was less than in the men’s 100 metres. Gabriela Szabo just got the edge over Sonia O’Suillivan in the women’s 5000 metres. Stacy Dragila set a world record in winning the women’s pole vault from Tatiana Grigorie- va, Virgilijus Alekna threw the discus almost 70 metres to win gold and Anier Garcia beat Terrence Trammell, Allen Johnson and Colin Jackson in the men’s 110 metres hurdles inal. To inish the night, the three semi-inals of the men’s 800 metres were won by eventual gold medallist Nils Schumann (1:44.22), Djabir Said-Guerni (1:44.19) and Wilson Kipketer (1:44.22). The slowest man into the inal was Hezekiel Sepeng, at 1:44.85. The Baci chocolates on the pillow at the end of a perfect night, I called them back then. It was all chocolates, actually, not a boiled lolly to be seen.

Triumph in a crumpled heap 211 A Column By Len Johnson

ME BOOTS HAVE EXPLODED!

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 exploding boots. The irst victim is Major Denis Bloodnok, the disgraced and disgraceful (if he cared to admit it) army oficer voiced by Sellers.

The Bloodnok boots explode on the dance loor. “Great naked kippers! Me boots have exploded!,” he cries.

Eliud Kipchoge took the explosion of his running shoes last Sunday in Berlin with far greater equanimity. Widely-published images show the insoles of Kipchoge’s racing lats lapping around his ankles from early in the race.

“It wasn’t a good day for me in these shoes,” Kipchoge seriously understated, “although they’re actually very good. I tested them in Kenya but just had bad luck on the day.” This was Kipchoge after the race, after he had won in a personal best and world lead 2:04:00. If this was his reaction when the problem happened, then he really is blessed with Zen-like equanimity.

Me boots have exploded! 212 A Column By Len Johnson

The irst thing to ponder is how much the mishap cost Kipchoge. He ran 2:04:00 in some degree of discomfort, how much faster might he have gone under normal circumstances. Maybe not much faster at all; he did run a personal best after all. But you would assume a time far closer to Dennis Kimetto’s world and race record 2:02:57.

The case of Kipchoge’s exploding shoes, or absconding insoles, calls to mind other great shoe disasters. The nearest comparison I can think of comes from Quincy Watts in the 400 metres inal at the Stuttgart 1993 world championships.

Watts had won the Barcelona Olympic title the previous year. Stuttgart brought him -to gether against world record holder Butch Reynolds and Michael Johnson. Watts was up with the leaders on the home turn when his shoe literally started coming apart.

As in the Kipchoge incident, the Watts one involved custom-made Nike shoes. Tom Hart- ge, Nike’s then marketing manager for running, could not recall a similar incident.

“I didn’t sleep much,” said Hartge of race night. Nor was he consoled by the fact that the irst two inishers, Johnson and Reynolds, also had worn customized Nikes. “It really drove me crazy. Our shoe was not up to the level of Quincy Watts as a performer. For me, it’s embarrassing.”

Not as embarrassing as an athlete throwing your shoes away. Both cases so far have involved shoes rejecting, as it were, the athlete. My next three favourites all involve the athlete rejecting the shoes.

Most famous was Abebe Bikila in the Rome 1960 Olympic marathon. The legendary marathoner padded barefoot past Rome’s ancient monuments and along the Appian to win Ethiopia’s irst Olympic medal.

Bikila, according to The Olympic Marathon, by David Martin and Roger Gynn, rejected shoes not once, but twice. The shoes he had trained in gave out on him in the Village, then a potential replacement pair from a local shop (shoe company reps apparently did not come to athletes in those days!) proved unsuitable.

So Bikila ran and won barefoot, adding a further exotic touch to the already exotic phenomenon of his country’s emergence on the Olympic stage.

The shoes Jim Bailey rejected, on the other hand, found redemption on another pair of feet.

Bailey famously beat John Landy at the Los Angeles Coliseum in the run-up to the Mel - bourne 1956 Olympics then infamously said he could do it again any time they raced. A scholarship holder at the University of Oregon (coached by the legendary Bill Bower- man), Bailey came home to win a place in the Australian Olympic team but had a shocking Olympics, failing to make the inal of the 800 metres and not running the 1500 heats.

Me boots have exploded! 213 A Column By Len Johnson

Disillusioned, Bailey threw his brand new adidas runners into the bin of the room he shared with Dave Power at the Olympic Village.

Power asked if he could have them, instead. “Sure,” Bailey replied, “they’re no use to me.” Two years, and many patch-ups, later, Power won the Empire Games marathon wearing Bailey’s discarded shoes.

Zola Budd didn’t reject speciic shoes, the South African-born runner rejected all shoes during her brief time as a British representative. She ran barefoot in the controversial Olympic 3000 metres inal when America’s darling Mary Decker tangled with Budd and fell while trying to push through on the inside to take the lead. Budd inished seventh, but had better fortune winning the next two world cross-country titles barefoot.

Then there’s the lost shoe. Losing a shoe mid-race is normally a bad thing. Most recently it happened to Jenny Simpson in the inal of the women’s 1500 metres at the world championships.

Other times it can be a good thing. Moses Tanui lost one at the bell in the Stuttgart world championships 10,000 metres when Haile Gebrselassie trod on his heels. An enraged Ta- nui kicked the shoe right off before heading off in hot pursuit of the great man. He didn’t quite catch him, but he did run one of the best last laps ever against ‘Geb’. At the inish, Tanui retrieved the shoe and brandished it menacingly in Gebrselassie’s face – but that’s another story.

Finally, two favourites emerged in researching The Landy Era. The irst was inding out that Australian 1936 Berlin Olympic 800 metres inalist Gerard Backhouse once found himself stranded after a party and ran home from Mt Eliza to East Malvern – some 50 kilometres — in his street clothes. You can bet his shoes were on the point of exploding.

The other swings on blindly emulating what champions do – or, rather, what you think they are doing. Like many young runners Geoff Warren was in awe of sessions the great Emil Zatopek reportedly did in army boots – in the snow.

Warren couldn’t conjure up snow in suburban Melbourne, but he did dig up some army boots, proceeding to run sessions of repetition 400s, a ‘Zato’ staple, in them. He wondered why his feet were hurting until he came across a photograph of the ‘boots’ Zatopek wore – inely made parachute boots, they were, more akin to basketball shoes than heavy leath - er boots. He quickly reverted to his original footwear.

So, if you’re going to run a mile in any of the shoes described above, best go for Eliud Kipchoge’s, lapping insoles and all. At least they’ve got 2:04 marathon potential.

Me boots have exploded! 214