That is Elliott Denman’s column on Race Strolling. A 1956 Olympian on the historic 50k RW distance, Elliott has written about race strolling and different athletic occasions, together with the Olympics and World Champs, for my publications and web sites since 1990.
MARATHON RACEWALKS
NEXT ON GLOBAL AGENDA
By ELLIOTT DENMAN
The Lord has spoken…and many of us are paying shut consideration.
This Lord is Sebastian Coe, who, after successful two Olympic 1500-meter gold medals after serving as a Conservative member of Parliament for
Falmouth-Camborne in Cornwall, after accepting a Life Peerage in 2000, after chairing the ultra-successful London 2012 Olympic Video games, and now presiding over World Athletics, the worldwide governing physique for “the flagship sport of the Olympic Video games,” continues to say, “Simply name me Seb, please.”
In fact, the game recognized in the USA as observe and area is “athletics” to the remainder of the planet, however Seb’s extensive horizons have by no means been restricted to this single sport. He’s actually a person for all seasons, and now his hat is within the ring within the upcoming vote to call the successor to Thomas Bach as president of the Worldwide Olympic Committee, the most important job in all sports activities.
Clearly, there’s loads on his plate, however it’s no time to cross the baton on his World Athletics chieftain function now, both.
He convened together with his WA Council teammates this week, and so they made a heap of determinations relative to an array of main WA productions.
I could also be one of many few world journalists genuinely within the racewalking division of our sport. Hey, colleagues, are you able to inform me concerning the occasion Norman Learn, Don Thompson, and Abdon Pamich led the world? – so the current declarations snared my particular consideration.
Most significantly, the racewalking distances at WA Championship occasions beginning in 2026 have been decided. Adherents of the 50-kilometer occasion – on the Olympic program from Los Angeles 1932 to Tokyo/Sapporo 2021, 20 of them – have been saddened when their occasion was chopped to 35K on the 2022 World Championships in Eugene, then chopped out of the 2024 Paris Olympics altogether – and changed by the gimmickry of the Marathon Stroll Relay.
Curious because it was, and beneath vital prodding, that stroll relay actually acquired WA considering,,, and considering,
Unbeknown to most followers of the racewalking sport, vital choices have been being made in that route.
And so they have been made public by Coe and the Council just a few days in the past.
Formally said, they’re:
“The World Athletics Council additionally accepted the introduction of recent official senior street distances for race strolling occasions to assist put the exceptional achievements by athletes into context, make the occasions extra relatable for followers, and encourage mass participation. The usual senior distances for race strolling will, due to this fact, change from (a) 20km race stroll to half marathon race stroll (21.0975km); (b) 35km race stroll to marathon race stroll (42.195km); (c) st U20 stage the boys’s and girls’s 10,000m race walks shall be changed by a 5,000m race stroll occasion.
So now, all you racewalking followers on the market, the place can we stand??
Right here is one man’s take:
Switching to 42.195K is a superb thought. It’s the good compromise between those that needed to maintain the 50K on this system eternally and people who have been happy with the 35 Ok.
Switching to 21.0975 is good, too. It’s simply over 20K, a regular occasion at each vital world meet since 1956.
However 5,000m as a substitute of 10,000 on the Junior stage? Not such an incredible thought. Racewalking is mainly a distance sport; 5,000 m is a relative dash. Convey again the ten.
WA’s huge hope is that these new marathon walks will get extra world citizenry , realizing what sensational athletes these world-class walkers should be. And that essentially the most common of all train kinds is, after all,/after all, simply plain strolling.
An instance: When France’s Yohan Diniz walked to his 50K world report of three:32:33 at Zurich on August 15, 2014, it meant he was clipping off his 31.1 miles at 6:49 apiece and passing the 26-mile, 385-yard marathon distance in about 2:58.30.
And put that clocking on the outcomes listing of a typical huge metropolis marathon run- say
NYC 2024 – and he’d have positioned about 2,two hundredth out of 55,000-plus within the race.
How’s that for reminding the final inhabitants simply how
very good a typical world-class racewalker should be?
Don’t like gimmicks? Do not forget that the primary 42.195K marathon run – Windsor Citadel to Shepherd’s Bush Olympic Stadium in London 1908 – was a gimmick. Not till the 1912 and 1920 Olympic marathons have been within the books did the gimmicky 42.195 turn out to be normal.
Nevertheless, one very important factor was not included in Seb Coe’s Council announcement.
It didn’t declare that 42.195 racewalks for women and men could be staged on the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Video games…or past. Or the 21.096s. It additionally gave no future standing report on the Marathon Stroll Relay—some liked it, others didn’t—as staged in Paris.
A bunch of those solutions could also be decided by the March 2025 election for the IOC presidency.
If Coe takes workplace, search for different improvements on the Olympic stage.
Olympic whole participation limits, which are actually about 11,000 for all sports activities? Effectively, simply elevate them.
Limiting the Video games to a single metropolis or single nation? Truly, that’s already being finished…in World Cup soccer. Lots past Southern California will host the 2028 Olympic occasions. All-new Olympic cricket shall be on Lengthy Island, New York, and soccer throughout America. And so on and so forth.
New sports activities are clamoring to get within the door. Effectively, let just a few extra in.
However don’t let the previous ones hang around to dry, both.
Racewalking has been a part of the Video games since 1904. The racing distances have ranged from half of one mile (within the previous, 10-event all-around occasion) to 1,500, 3,500, and 10,000 meters, then 10 miles on the observe and 20K and 50K on the roads.
Change has been a semi-constant.
Now it’s marathon racewalking’s (and half-marathon’s) flip.
