50 km walk (road), men

What to remember

Race walking means staying in contact with the ground and keeping the supporting leg straight until the other one passes it. Over 50 km, at an average of 14.114 km/h (8.770 mph), France's Yohann Diniz kept to those rules all the way to 3 h 32 min 33.00 s, on August 15, 2014 in Zurich, at the European Championships.

That European title was already his third, after Gothenburg in 2006 and Barcelona in 2010, and he had added a world silver medal in Osaka in 2007. Born in Épernay, he also set, in 2011 in Reims, the world record for the 50,000 m track walk, in 3 h 35 min 27 s, an event not to be confused with the 50 km on the road.

The distance itself belongs to history: first held at the Olympics in 1932, it was dropped after the Tokyo Games and replaced by a mixed relay over the marathon distance. For women, the world record was set in 2019 by China's Liu Hong, with 3 h 59 min 15 s.