Race walking
at the Olympic Games
The 2004 Olympic men's 20 km walk final
Overview
SportAthletics
GenderMen and women
Years heldMen 20 km: 1956 – 2020
Men 50 km: 1932 – 2020
Women 20 km: 2000 – 2020
Olympic record
Men20 km 1:18:46 Chen Ding (2012)
50 km 3:36:53 Jared Tallent (2012)
Women20 km 1:25:16 Qieyang Shenjie (2012)
Reigning champion
Men20 km  Massimo Stano (ITA)
50 km  Dawid Tomala (POL)
Women20 km  Antonella Palmisano (ITA)

Race walking events at the Summer Olympics have been contested over a variety of distances at the multi-sport event. There were three race walking events in the 2020 Summer Olympics: a men's and a women's 20 kilometres walk, and a men's 50 kilometres walk. The races were held in a final-only format.

The first men's events came at the 1908 London Olympics, which featured 3500 m and 10-mile distances. A 10-kilometre version was introduced at the 1912 Summer Olympics and it continued until 1952 (skipping three editions from 1928 to 1936). There was also a one-off 3000 m walk at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics. The men's 20 km walk became the standard short distance for men in 1956 and has continued since then. The longer men's event over 50 km was first held at the 1932 Summer Olympics and has been held continuously until the present day, except for a brief drop from the programme in 1976 – the IAAF held a World Championship for the event in protest and it was restored.

The first women's event was introduced at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, 84 years after the first men's race. Held over 10 km for the first two editions, the women's event was extended to match the men's 20 km distance from the 2000 Sydney Olympics onwards. Women have never commonly competed internationally over 50 km, thus it has never been proposed as an Olympic event – as of 2012 it remains the only event on the Olympic athletics programme in which men compete, but women do not have an equivalent. The 50 km is also the longest distance race for an Olympic athletics event.[1]

The Olympic records in racewalking were all broken at the 2012 London Olympics. In the 20 km walk Chen Ding holds the men's record of 1:18:46 hours, while Elena Lashmanova holds the women's mark of 1:25:02 hours. The men's 50 km record is 3:36:53 hours, set by Jared Tallent. Lashmanova's time was a world record – the first and so far only time a world record in racewalking has been set at an Olympic Games.[2] Robert Korzeniowski is the most successful Olympic racewalker, having won the 50 km three times as well as the 20 km walk. Three other athletes have won four Olympic walk medals: Ugo Frigerio won three gold medals and a bronze in early competitions, Volodymyr Holubnychy won two 20 km walk titles as well as a silver and a bronze, and Jared Tallent won a gold medal in the 50 km along with two silver and a bronze.

The 1906 Intercalated Games, now not considered an official Olympic event, was the first venue for racewalking under the Olympic banner. Poor technique and judging significantly affected the 1500 m walk event, to the point where a rematch over 3000 m was added at short notice and judged by Constantine I of Greece.

Race walking has been particularly affected by doping, with many Russian world and Olympic champions testing positive for banned performance-enhancing drugs.[3][4]

Medal summary

Men's 20 km walk


Women's 20 km walk

Defunct distances

Men's 3000 m walk

Games Gold Silver Bronze
1920 Antwerp
  Ugo Frigerio (ITA)  George Parker (AUS)  Richard Remer (USA)

Men's 3500 m walk

Games Gold Silver Bronze
1908 London
  George Larner (GBR)  Ernest Webb (GBR)  Harry Kerr (ANZ)

Men's 10 km

Games Gold Silver Bronze
1912 Stockholm
 George Goulding
 Canada		 Ernest Webb
 Great Britain		 Fernando Altimani
 Italy
1920 Antwerp
 Ugo Frigerio
 Italy		 Joseph Pearman
 United States		 Charles Gunn
 Great Britain
1924 Paris
 Ugo Frigerio
 Italy		 Gordon Goodwin
 Great Britain		 Cecil McMaster
 South Africa
1928–1936not included in the Olympic program
1948 London
 John Mikaelsson
 Sweden		 Ingemar Johansson
 Sweden		 Fritz Schwab
 Switzerland
1952 Helsinki
 John Mikaelsson
 Sweden		 Fritz Schwab
 Switzerland		 Bruno Junk
 Soviet Union

Men's 10 miles

Games Gold Silver Bronze
1908 London
  George Larner (GBR)  Ernest Webb (GBR)  Edward Spencer (GBR)

Men's 50 km walk

Women's 10 km

Games Gold Silver Bronze
1992 Barcelona
 Chen Yueling
 China		 Yelena Nikolayeva
 Unified Team		 Li Chunxiu
 China
1996 Atlanta
 Yelena Nikolayeva
 Russia		 Elisabetta Perrone
 Italy		 Wang Yan
 China

Intercalated Games

The 1906 Intercalated Games were held in Athens and at the time were officially recognised as part of the Olympic Games series, with the intention being to hold a games in Greece in two-year intervals between the internationally held Olympics. However, this plan never came to fruition and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) later decided not to recognise these games as part of the official Olympic series. Some sports historians continue to treat the results of these games as part of the Olympic canon.[5]

Two walking events were held on the track at the 1906 Games: a men's 1500 m walk and a men's 3000 m walk. The first final to be held was the shorter distance. American George Bonhag, an absolute walking novice who had competed in the 5-mile run, came away as the winner after Canada's Don Linden, the eventual runner-up, had given basic technical advice to allow him to compete.[6]

The 3000 m walk was held two days later as a last minute addition to the athletics programme, which was approved and also adjudicated by Constantine I of Greece after the dissatisfaction with the initial race. The entire walking field, minus Bonhag and Linden, was rearranged for the competition. Britain's Robert Wilkinson and Austria's Eugen Spiegler were again disqualified in the final stages for running, leaving Hungary's György Sztantics as the winner by a large margin.[7]

Games Gold Silver Bronze
1906 Athens
  George Bonhag (USA)  Don Linden (CAN)  Konstantinos Spetsiotis (GRE)
1906 Athens
  György Sztantics (HUN)  Hermann Müller (GER)  Georgios Saridakis (GRE)

References

Participation and athlete data
Olympic record progressions
Specific
  1. ↑ 50 Kilometres Race Walk. IAAF. Retrieved on 2014-05-21.
  2. ↑ Mulkeen, Jon (2012-08-11). Lashmanova sets 20km Race Walk World record in London!. IAAF. Retrieved on 2014-05-21.
  3. ↑ Wilder, Charly (16 June 2015). "Where Racewalking is King, the Antidoping Officials Are Busy". The New York Times.
  4. ↑ "Banned Russian race walking coach still working with athletes, official says". Reuters. 24 January 2020.
  5. ↑ 1906 Athina Summer Games. Sports Reference. Retrieved on 2014-02-07.
  6. ↑ Athletics at the 1906 Athina Summer Games: Men's 1,500 metres Walk. Sports Reference. Retrieved on 2014-05-21.
  7. ↑ Athletics at the 1906 Athina Summer Games: Men's 3,000 metres Walk. Sports Reference. Retrieved on 2014-05-21.
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