Thanks as ever to Dave Ainsworth for this significant news. My first reaction is lukewarm. Your thoughts appreciated.
≡ WORLD ATHLETICS COUNCIL ≡
It’s not often that race walking draws headlines, but a major change and potentially momentous change in the walks was a highlight of the World Athletics Council meeting in Monaco:
“The World Athletics Council also approved the introduction of new official senior road distances for race walking events, in order to help put the remarkable achievements by athletes into context, make the events more relatable for fans, and encourage mass participation. The standard senior distances for race walking will therefore change from:
“● 20 km race walk to half marathon race walk (21.0975km)
“● 35 km race walk to marathon race walk (42.195km)
“These changes will be implemented starting 1 January 2026 in senior World Athletics Series events.”
World Athletics President Sebastian Coe (GBR) explained: “I think we’ve made the right decision today to make it more relatable to Half Marathon and Marathon.
“The fact that you’ve got you’ve got race walkers that will cover that marathon distance in just under three hours, I think sort of places it into a greater context for people watching the event. Our attempts in all our innovations is to lend a little bit more understanding and context to to our fans, and we recognize that at the major games, a large chunk of our fan base that watching that are probably may well be watching the sport for the first time, so our innovation is there’s a very clear rationale behind it. It is to try and make more understandable, more salient, more relevant these events.”
The 20 km walk has been part of the Olympic program since 1956 for men and 2000 for women and the 50 km walk was a men’s event from 1932 to Tokyo 2020, but was not held at Paris 2024. World Athletics changed the 50 km event to 35 km for men and women for the 2022 World Championships.
Now, all of these events are out and the new half marathon and marathon distances will be installed. As for the status of these new distances in the Olympic Games, Coe noted:
“I think that is a question that is best directed at the [IOC] Program Commission and the Sports Department. What we’ve said is race walk is secure in our World Championships.”
Lancashire Walking Club : Health The First Wealth 
coe and his cronies have destroyed the walking events .when the chip in the shoe comes into effect it will be the end of race walking .I’m glad I don’t class myself as a race walker ,now a power walker
Why, oh why do we have to make race walking relatable to Marathon and half marathon running. The disciplines totally differ from each other but of course race walkers have to bow to the “superiority” of the running events. I can only see more and more disqualifications as race walkers will be now subjected to producing faster times with increasing “flight mode” actions. So much for Seb Coe deluding himself that he is making race walking more popular to the general public, who will become more and more sceptical because of the changes. We are now on the slippery slope to oblivion!
if it’s stimulates more interest and take up of the event of race walking I’m all for it. When you look at the different sport are being introduced at some point the less viable events will be excluded. Let’s face it break dancing is very popular.????
people are making decisions on race walking who are a,not race walkers b,track athletes, and c,media who don’t understand race walking and the only thing they are interested in is TV coverage and making money. There’s new track league starting just for sprinters run by Michael Johnson, ( money spinner) the field events don’t get a look in. We need more grass root events concentrating on all athletics events giving plenty of choices. Look like the Olympics maybe on its way out