The men's 20 kilometres race walk at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London took place on 4 August on a route along The Mall and Constitution Hill in central London.
Robert Heffernan and Grzegorz Sudol took the early lead, soon joined by Yusuke Suzuki. Like a bicycle race, the unheralded Suzuki steadily broke away from the peloton. Suzuki led past the 8k mark but was eventually swallowed by a group led by Wang Zhen, followed by his teammate Chen Ding and Valeriy Borchin. By the half way mark the lead pack was down to twelve. Around the 11K mark, leader Wang made an odd gesture, hand over head, to the pack behind him, moments later Bertrand Moulinet broke away from the pack as Wang slowed. After gaining as much as a seven-second lead, the chasers caught back up to Moulinet and left him to fall off the pace, while Chen took his turn to break off the front as the pack started to string out in chase. Wang, Borchin and Erick Barrondo were the strongest chasers, forming a pack of four. A few minutes later Vladimir Kanaykin, then Luis Fernando López managed to bridge back to the leaders. Moments after joining the lead group, Lopez was given the red paddle, signifying his disqualification. Kanaykin was also given the paddle a minute after that. For a moment they were four abreast, but again Chen put the hammer down, eventually dropping Wang. By the bell Chen had built an 8-second lead over Borchin, who was picking up warnings and cards from the judges. Chen signaled one finger to the crowd. As Borchin struggled, Wang zoomed past the two remaining chasers. Barrondo reacted and accelerated to put some distance ahead of Wang. An exhausted Borchin chased for only a few moments then collapsed into a fence alongside the course. The third Chinese Zelin Cai hovered off the back of the pack and steadily picked off all the stragglers to eventually finish fourth for a remarkable 1-3-4 team performance. A jubilant Chen celebrated all the way from the final turn. Even though he gave up significant time along the way, Chen set a new Olympic Record at 1:18:46. China's Chen Ding won the gold medal. Erick Barrondo from Guatemala won silver and Wang Zhen, also of China, took bronze. Barrondo's silver medal was the first Olympic medal for Guatemala.
Schedule
All times are British Summer Time (UTC+1) Date Time Round4 August 2012 17:00Final
Records , the existing World and Olympic records stood as follows.
World record1:17:16Saransk, Russia29 September 2007Olympic record1:18:59Sydney, Australia22 September 20002012 World leading1:17:30Lugano, Switzerland18 March 2012
The following new Olympic record was set during this event:
Date Event Athlete Time Notes 4 August Final 1:18:46 OR
The following National records were set during this competition.
China national record1:18:46India national record1:20:21Canada national record1:20:58Greece national record1:21:12Argentina national record1:22:10
Result
RankAthleteNationalityTimeNotes Chen Ding 1:18:46 Érick Barrondo 1:18:57 Wang Zhen 1:19:25 Cai Zelin 1:19:44 Miguel Ángel López 1:19:49 Eder Sánchez 1:19:52 Jared Tallent 1:20:02 Bertrand Moulinet 1:20:12 Robert Heffernan 1:20:18 10 Irfan Kolothum Thodi 1:20:2111 João Vieira 1:20:41 12 Dzianis Simanovich 1:20:42 13 Inaki Gomez 1:20:5814 Erik Tysse 1:21:00 15 Alexandros Papamichail 1:21:12 16 Ivan Trotski 1:21:23 17 Kim Hyun-Sub 1:21:36 18 Isamu Fujisawa 1:21:48 19 Dawid Tomala 1:21:5520 Éider Arévalo 1:22:00 21 André Höhne 1:22:02 22 Juan Manuel Cano 1:22:10 23 Anton Kučmín 1:22:25 24 Grzegorz Sudoł 1:22:40 25 Takumi Saito 1:22:4326 Trevor Barron 1:22:46 27 Nazar Kovalenko 1:22:54 28 James Rendón 1:22:54 29 Rafał Augustyn 1:23:17 30 Ruslan Dmytrenko 1:23:21 31 Byun Young-Jun 1:23:2632 Máté Helebrandt 1:23:32 33 Gurmeet Singh 1:23:34 34 Isaac Palma 1:23:3535 Georgiy Sheiko 1:23:52 36 Yusuke Suzuki 1:23:53 37 Andrey Krivov 1:24:1738 Chris Erickson 1:24:1939 Caio Bonfim 1:24:4540 Marius Žiūkas 1:24:4541 Yerko Araya 1:25:27 42 Giorgio Rubino 1:25:28 43 Baljinder Singh 1:25:39 44 Mauricio Arteaga 1:25:5145 Arnis Rumbenieks 1:26:2646 Ever Palma 1:26:3047 Ivan Losyev 1:26:5048 Predrag Filipović 1:27:22 – Valeriy Borchin – , – Álvaro Martín – – Park Chil-Sung – – Ebrahim Rahimian – – Adam Rutter – – Hassanine Sebei – – Vladimir Kanaykin – – Luis Fernando López –
References