On race-walking stupidity

Let me start with a warning. In the photo below one can see the 2023 world champions. They are great athletes. I am deeply convinced of this. Any critique I am raising concerning race-walking is not addressed at the athletes but at the discipline itself. The athletes compete within the rules set by the international instances. They train (very) hard and make sacrifices in order to reach the summit of their discipline. They have my unquestionable admiration. What I am criticising is the set of rules which allow for an unnatural sport to exist.

In 2018 World Athletics, in the name of men-women parity (while they steadfastly refuse to do anything about women's decathlon) decided to open the 50 km race-walking event to women. Women have been competing on that distance well before that date. On the World Athletics page with the best performances one finds the name of Sandra Brown with a 4:50:51 performance from 1991. The world record is held by Y. Lashmanova with 3:50:42. Inês Henriques won the first world title in 2017. 

However, after the proposal for the inclusion of the events in the Tokyo Olympics was rejected, the event was discontinued and World Athletics decided to revise the distances of the race-walking events. There have been several conflicting announcements on this point and most turned out to be inaccurate. 

The initial Paris Olympics athletics program did not contain any individual event. It was later revised so as to include the 20 km for both men and women. However, the 50 km has definitely disappeared. It was replaced by a relay event, for a mixed team of two, each athlete running two legs. Now, this is the interesting part. The IOC page talks about a marathon,i.e. a 42195 m race. But the program of the Paris Olympics announces a 35 km. 

When I wrote "each athlete running" in the paragraph just above I hesitated just a bit but then I decided to let it pass. After all, it is clear that all high-level race-walking involves running. And this is the reason why I am always criticising this unnatural discipline.  But here I am not going to pursue this line of criticism. Rather I would like to point out why the World Athletics choice of distances for the individual events, 20 and 35 km is absurd. 

First, compare last year's women's World Championships results. Do you remark something? 

Next, in my post on my choice of 2022 best athletes, I included A. Drisbioti who had won both the 20 and the 35 km in last year's Europeans. And this year both distances were won by the same athlete in the men's category (Álvaro Marín) and women's (Maria Pérez). Is that a simple coincidence? I do not think so. For me, this is a stupid choice of World Athletics. The two distances are too similar when it comes to the effort involved and an athlete can train perfectly and be in top shape for both. Had they chosen, say 10 and 35 km, the situation could have been different. It would be preferable to remove one distance altogether and keep just the longer one, perhaps even shortened to 30 km. 

But what would have been even better would be to forget altogether about race-walking. 

The 2023 World Athletics Awards

World Athletics sprung a surprise upon us by nominating not one but three athletes of the year. They decided to nominate the best athletes for track, field and road. This had the advantage of providing a solution to the Duplantis-Lyles dilemma. By this decision, both were nominated and WA did not have to choose (a choice that would have been unsatisfactory in every case). So Lyles carried away the award for track and Duplantis for field. The road awards went to Kiptum and Assefa who established new world records in the marathon. As expected, Kipyegon won the award for women's track. 

My only objection is the nomination of Rojas for the women's field award.  If I had to choose a female field specialist among the WA chosen ones I would unhesitantly choose Nageotte. But Rojas appears to somehow be the "blue-eyed" girl of World Athletics: she has already won the title once and she obtained another one this year when her performances have been far from stellar. 

And, of course, I regret the fact that Jackson could not get a distinction beyond being included in the finalist list, but in the end, I would have chosen Kipyegon myself (in fact, I did).

There was no surprise in the Rising Star Awards. As I predicted Wanyonyi obtained the men's title. Knighton could have won, but the fact that he had already been nominated in 2021 and 2022 put him at a slight disadvantage. Topic also was at a relative disadvantage since she had already obtained the European title. So the choice went to Cherotich as I had predicted (well, after having forgotten her in my initial choice).

The remaining World Athletics nominations for the 2023 awards (at least the ones I am interested in) were not really to my taste. The only possible exception is that of L. Meuwly's nomination for the Coaching Achievement award. Meuwly is the coach of F. Bol (who shined in the low hurdles this year) and, in fact, of most of the Dutch 400 m male and female stars.  

The World Athletics photograph of the year was a pure let-down. I will not even show the photo that won the prize. (If you care about having a look at it, here is the link). As far as I am concerned, I still prefer the one with Bol's fall in the mixed 4x400 m relay, and if I had to choose another one, I would opt for the photo of G. Tamberi celebrating his victory.

L. Gidey won the Fair Play award. The reason for this was that, after winning silver behind Tsegay in the women's 10000 m, Gidey went back to comfort S. Hassan after the latter fell on the track during the sprint for first place. Does this count as fair play? I am not convinced.

Now we have to wait till the end of 2024 to see if the decision to nominate the best athletes for track, field and road will become the rule (in which case the initial selection and that of finalists should be broader) or if it was a one-shot thing meant to avoid a difficult choice in the case of men's title.

PS. And if you wonder what is a great sports photo, here is one

by the famous photographer of l'Equipe, R. Legros, who passed away a few days ago.

Where are the talents of yesteryear?

Warning! This article was written before the 2023 World's 1500 m final where Kerr managed to beat Ingebrigtsen for the world title. Nothing has changed as far as the conclusions of the present article are concerned, and my comments on what went on in the 2023 World's can be found in the corresponding article.

The origin of this post is somewhat complicated, so I feel that some explanations are in order. As you know I am a big fan of Pierre-Jean Vazel and I follow regularly his tweets. There is always something interesting there. However, with the turmoil Twitter is undergoing I have resorted to asking Google whenever I was looking for something specific. And, during one of my searches, Google pointed me to an article by Vazel on the Simplifaster site. It was an analysis of Keni Harrison’s, 2016, 12.20 s world record 100 m hurdles race. That was not what I was looking for, but I was intrigued and I decided to read it. As usual, Vazel's analysis is great and I do recommend that you give it a try.

Vazel explains that Harrison dipped and one of the two photoelectric cells on the finish line could not detect her. So the initially announced time was wrong (based on the second finisher). Of course, once the photo finish was analysed all went back to normal and Harrison got the world record. This led Vazel to comment on a similar situation when in the women(s 400 m race at the Rio, 2016, Olympics, Shaunae Miller dived across the finish line, causing a timing bug. The screen displayed Miller’s time as 49.51, but that was Allyson Felix's time. Of course, the photo finish gave the correct times 49.44 to 49.51, and the victory to Miller. Vazel then went on to cite Kumari Taki’s dive during the 1500 m final at the 2016 World U20 Championships. (Vazel is talking about 5000 m, a curious mistake for somebody of his experience). I had never heard of this and I decided to look for the video. Fortunately, it did exist and I discovered that among the participants of the final was one Jakob Ingebrigtsen.

Ingebrigtsen finished 9th in that race (he was just 16 years old) and went on to become one of the best middle-distance runners of all time, winning olympic and world titles. When I read Vazel's article I was following the 2023 European U20 championships and I was wondering how many of the protagonists would survive the transition to senior category. The 1500 m final of the 2016 World U20 Championships was a good test case. So I decided to find out what has become of the finishers. 

1. Kumari Taki, PB 3:34.14 (2020). He was 4th at the 2022 African Championships. No performances in 2023 but this may be due to injury.

2. Taresa Tolosa, PB 3:34.47 (2017). He was 5th at the 2016 African Championships.  Won a Diamond League event in 2018. He moved to longer distances from 2020.

3. Anthony Kiptoo, PB 3:35.33 (2015). Disappeared after 2018.

4. Baptiste Mischler, PB 3:32.42 (2021). He is still in activity but only at a national level.

5. Ajay Kumar Saroj, PB 3:39.19 (2023). He was Asian champion in 2017 and again in 2023.

6. Matthew Ramsden, PB 3:34.08 (2021). He was the Oceania champion in 2021.

7. Jordi Torrents, PB 3:40.92 (2016). He dropped out in 2018, then came back in 2022 but did not have any performance in 2023.

8. Asres Guadie, PB 3:41.9 (2017). Disappeared after 2018.

10. Josh Kerr, PB 3:29.05 (2021). He was 3rd in the Tokyo Olympics. (And world champion in 2023).

11. Elzan Bibic, PB 3:34.20 (2023). He was 3rd in the European Indoors 2023.

12. Ayoub Sniba, PB 3:39.42 (2018). Disappeared after 2018. (He had the best time in the heats, a time sufficient for first place in the final, but apparently, the slow, tactical, race in the latter did not suit him).

So, out of the 12 finalists, we have one superstar, one who is part of the middle-distance elite, 3 who have distinctions at a continental level, 3 who are still active albeit with no great success, and 4 who just dropped out. Is that representative of athletics in general? Should one expect fewer than half of the athletes who were distinguished when junior to have a successful career as senior? I don't know the answer to these questions. However, it is clear that many of the athletes we admired in Jerusalem, during the U20 Europeans, will turn out to be early bloomers, withering soon after.