The two races of Arles (FRA) and Names (JPN) have shocked the world list of the 20 km men with regard to the first 20 positions (at the bottom of the world list today of the top 20 athletes).

Until last Saturday, it seemed that the time Eiki Takahashi (JPN), coached by Shigeyuki Shimizu was going to last as world best until the World Championships in Beijing 2015, or at least to one of the European leg of the IAAF Challenge (Rio Maior o Coruna) or Asian (Taicang), however this did not happen.

Before the surprise of the French Championship in Arles for a moment that left us all stunned: the same athlete to hold the world record in walking on both the Olympic distances. We believe that this condition is not never happened, or whether it happened his memory is lost in the mists of time.

Then, after just one week, the stratospheric race of Nomi that has completely rewritten the world list of the distance with respect to the first ten athletes.

We hope that Yohann Diniz doesn’t hold a grudge against us, but, as we were happy in Zurich when he destroyed the previous record on 50 km, we are now happy that his record was immediately broken, and that Yusuke Suzuki was the first athlete to break the wall of 77 minutes on the distance (because we never considered that the result of Morozov in Saransk of June 8, 2008).

We are happy for a few reasons:

- The first: it seems fair that the record on 20 km belongs to a "twenty-athlete" and not to a "fifty-asthlete";

- The second: it seems healthy for the global movement of walking that an emerging country like Japan has collected so the fruit, perhaps unexpected or perhaps not, of his intense activity in favor of the movement. Compliments to their Head Coach Fumio Imamura.

- The third: the World Walk shows an unexpected vitality. During this week of a lot of sports press and on many websites the news of record Yohann Diniz had held bank; Now we hope to read just as in the coming days.

And who knows that next week we should not repeat this story; who knows that the Chinese battleship in the port of Beijing do not wake up the next weekend, during the "test event" for the next World Championships outside the Bird's Nest, promising still a rewriting of history.

It would be another historic moment for the whole movement.

Fumio Imamura (Head Coach) and Jordi Llopart (JAAF Advisor)

before the race in the centre of training

Yusuke Suzuki congratulated by Jordi Llopart after the record

World list 20 km men up to March 15, 2015

Jordi Llopart observing young athletes during the race in Nomi

Contested arrival between Fujisawa and Matsunaga