Walking briskly becomes a sport called Racewalking
There is a sport where the objective is for the participants to walk as fast as they can without breaking into a run and cross the finish line first. This interesting sport is called Racewalking and it is a popular sport among many people around the world.
The thing about this sport is that it is very difficult; people think that walking quickly is a piece of cake, but it turns out that it is not easy to do at all. It is much lower impact than running so racewalkers escape some of the injuries that plague runners
but it is still very hard to master in the beginning. The future looks very bright for this alternative sport.
Racewalking is a long distance athletic event that is similar to a marathon except that the competitors are walking instead of running. There are two specific rules to this strange sport; the first is that the heel of the front foot must touch the ground
before the toes can be lifted off the ground of the back foot. This ensures that there is always contact with the ground of both feet during the race. If this rule is violated it is known as a ‘loss of contact’ and leads to a red card offense. If a player
gets three red cards during the race, he is disqualified.
The ‘loss of contact’ rule is controversial these days because of the high speeds at which athletes walk. Sometimes there can be the slightest loss of contact between the ground and an athlete’s feet and it is undetectable to the human eye. Since the event
is judged by humans on the track, they can sometimes miss a violation.
The other rule of the sport is that the supporting or back leg must straighten and remain straight until the body passes over it while a walker is in motion. This rule again can be sometimes missed by the judges also because of the high speed at which today’s
athletes compete at. At times, the only way to check if a violation has occurred is to use high speed cameras to capture the action. The reasons why racewalkers look so odd when they are competing in this sport are because of these rules. They seem to be walking
in a strange way and their bodies seem disjointed. But the rules specify that the sport must be contested in this manner.
The sport of Racewalking has a very interesting history. It first sprang to prominence in England during the early 1800s. By 1860, it was an established and popular sport among the working class of Britain. Soon it spread to America as well and became an
established sport there too. In 1866, the first amateur walking championship was set up and this was the first time the above mentioned heel and toe rule was developed. The rules of the sport were written down and codified during the inaugural Championships
Meeting of the Amateur Athletics Association. With this codifying, a new sport was officially born.
Racewalking has been an Olympic sport since 1904 and has been held every single year except for 1924. The event is held in 20km races for both men and women and a 50km race held only for men. The women’s Racewalking event finally became an Olympic event
in 1992 after protracted lobbying by female international Racewalkers. Besides the Olympics, a Racewalking World Cup is held every two years as well as a World Race Walking Challenge. Racewalking events also take place at the Commonwealth Games, the Pan American
Games and the IAAF Athletics World Championships.
This interesting sport has remained popular for a very long time and has been done by people all over the world with great enthusiasm. The world record holder for the fastest time to walk to the finish line in a 20km race is the Russian Racewalker, Sergey
Morozov whose winning time stands at 1:16:43. In the next few years maybe a young speed walker will emerge to challenge Morozov’s world record. The sport of Racewalking looks all set to remain as popular as it is as a new generation of athletes embrace this
interesting and slightly odd sport.
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