We'll Walk Trivia Quiz

While several athletes from the Americas have won Olympic medals in racewalking (or race walking - both spellings are equally good), Jefferson Leonardo Pérez Quezada is the only one of them to have claimed a golden one. His two medals came a full 12 years apart: He won gold over 20 km in Atlanta 1996 and then silver in Beijing 2008. Between these, he also became World Champion three times (2003, 2005 and 2007) and held the world record from 2003 to 2007.

The main difference between race walking and running is of course that walkers are not allowed to use a running gait. This is defined as always having contact with the ground with at least one foot - the front foot must touch down before the rear one can be lifted. A special rule however says that this cannot be enforced by technology or video recordings, so many racers push hard enough that they'll actually often lose contact for a tiny fraction of a second, too fast for even a trained judge, so when seeing still photos of racewalkers, you may notice that a walker seems to be "flying", without incurring a penalty.

You might think of Volodymyr Holubnychy as a Russian because he competed under the Soviet flag, but the truth is he was a Ukrainian, who lived all his life in Sumy, northeast Ukraine. He is undisputedly the world's most successful 20 km racewalker - male or female - winning gold medals in 1960 and 1968, silver in 1972 and bronze in 1964. He was also among the favorites for the 1956 games, having been world record holder at the time, but could not take part due to an illness. He participated in Masters' events (senior athletes) for Ukraine after 1990.

The unusual movement you see in racewalking is due to a second important rule. Unlike with power walking, where the athlete uses a bent knee on the leading leg to get maximum forward momentum, racewalkers must keep that leg straight until it is vertical, putting a much higher importance on step cadence than on length - a racewalker takes about as many steps per minute as an 800 meters runner, but must maintain this pace over hours.

The stiff, unnatural movement is also among the most frequent criticisms of the sport.

Robert Korzeniowski was primarily a specialist for the 50 kilometers, having won the event three times in a row - Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004. However, even more remarkable is that he has managed to also win the 20 kilometers in Sydney for a total of four gold medals, making him the only person who ever managed to win both events (whether in the same or different Olympics) before the 50 kilometer distance was phased out in favor of 35 km at all major competitions in 2022. He was inducted into the IAAF Hall of Fame in 2014.

Korzeniowski's success was partially due pushing the limits on technique, leading to several high profile disqualifications. including the Barcelona 1992 Olympics and the 1993 and 1999 World Championships. While this sounds excessive, disqualifications in racewalking are common. A disqualification happens when three different judges (from a panel of nine) flag the athlete for a violation of either the contact or straight knee rules; it does not matter if all violations are of the same or different kinds. Athletes however know how often they have been flagged, so they have the chance to be more cautious or risk it.

After winning bronze over 20 km and silver over 50 km in Beijing 2008, Jared Tallent one-upped his performance with the 50 km gold in London 2012 (he also competed over 20 km there, finishing 7th) and finally added a fourth medal - silver - to his tally in Rio de Janeiro 2016. He also finished second in the World Championships three times, in 2011, 2013 and 2015.

He was the first Australian racewalker to win gold at any Olympics, although, twelve years prior, Jane Saville who was leading the women's Sydney 2000 race only to commit a third form violation on the last meters, while entering the stadium, came tantalizingly close.

Apart from Korzeniowski and Tallent, the only other walker to win a medal over both 20 and 50 kilometers, prior to the retirement of the latter distance, was Ronald Weigel, an East German athlete who took both silver medals in the 1988 Seoul games.

John Arthur Ljunggren competed at the 50 km racewalk at five Olympic games, from 1948 to 1960. His gold medal came in 1948 (London) with a silver in 1960 (Rome) and a bronze in 1956 (Melbourne).

Unusually for a Scandinavian, he did not tolerate cold well, so what should have been his "close to home" games in Helsinki 1952 was actually not an environment where he could deliver a great performance, suffering from cramps and ultimately finishing ninth. He actually suffered the same fate in Rome, when an official splashed the walkers with ice water near the end of the race to ensure they would not overheat, otherwise he might still have been able to make a push for a second title - Ljunggren was ultimately only 17 seconds behind the winner.

Unusually for a top level walker, Ljunggren was very cautious about not committing form infractions and went for his entire international career without a single disqualification.

Liu Hong has been an active racewalker at top international levels from 2006 to at least 2021, including one each 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th place at the Olympics: 4th in Beijing 2008, 2nd in London 2012, winner in Rio 2016 and 3rd in Tokyo 2021.

Liu broke the world record over the 20 kilometers distance in 2015, setting a 1:24:38 time that stood into the 2020s. She also has posted the first female sub 4 hour time over the 50 km distance, which would make her a candidate for the first woman to win gold over both distances were it not for the fact that 50 km was never Olympic for women and, in fact, for 2024, the long distance was struck from the calendar for men as well, replaced with a 35 km mixed teams relay.

Maurizio Damilano's single Olympic gold medal is only slightly tainted by the fact that it was the 1980 Moscow games where many nations did not compete, since his Olympic record performance over 20 km rectifies that manco. While Italy was not among the boycott nations, its athletes competed under the Olympic flag and the country refused to take part in the opening ceremony. Damilano would go on to win two bronze medals in the two following incarnations of the games and narrowly miss out on a fourth medal in the 1992 Barcelona games, coming fourth.

Maurizio Damilano and his twin brother Giorgio were later among the founders of the powerwalking movement - a sport similar to race walking, but without the "straight knee" restriction (in fact requiring a bent knee), allowing for a more natural flow.

Peter Frenkel is a former an East German 20 km racewalker who won the gold medal at the 1972 Munich games and four years later won a second medal - a bronze - in Montreal. His performance was particularly impressive because, due to the extensive travel restrictions imposed on East Germans at the time, he had no access to a suitable altitude training location. Instead, he made use of a (de)pressurization chamber owned by the national airline to achieve the same effect, of course meaning that he had to do his sport under very cramped conditions. However, the result was certainly worth it.

After the German reunification, Frenkel was very active in the association of German Olympic athletes, serving as vice-president for eight years.

Athanasia Tsoumeleka remained a one-championship wonder, with only the 2004 Olympic gold medal to her name. Her only other international title was a juniors' one. Having the event in her home country probably helped inspire her to some extra greatness, although it was more that the other competitors had relatively weak times - her 1:29:12 winning time (a slight improvement on her personal best) would only have been good for 6th at the World Championships the previous year.

Tsoumeleka competed again in Beijing, but failed to make the top 6. In addition, one of her blood samples later tested positive for a substance that had just become reliably testable, so that result was voided and the athlete retired from the sport.

Olga Nikolayevna Kaniskina competed for Russia in both the 2008 Beijing Olympics where she won gold and set an Olympic record and the 2012 London games where she was originally awarded the silver medal, but the latter result was annulled several years later due to a doping violation which was never fully clarified - Russian anti-doping agency RUSADA had, in 2015, declared a ban and a series of results annulments first which however left gaps so two major events would not be excluded. On appeal by the IAAF, the Sports Arbitration Council CAS reviewed this decision and decided to annul all her results from 2009 to 2012.

Kaniskina now works as an athletics coach.

Doping is, unfortunately, a major topic in racewalking much as or even more than it is in any other endurance sport. Violations are rather frequently encountered and it rather common for results only to be truly and absolutely final several years after the event. In spite of the discipline's long Olympic tradition, this problem, combined with its relatively low popularity among viewers, puts a question mark behind racewalking's longer-term Olympic future.