Arrived near the end of the year now opens the season of list and rankings.

To be fair we had already anticipated in part this stage of the year with the preparation of our ranking female (see news of October 30, 2015  click here) and that of men (see news of 3 November 2015  click here).

Speed performances in female Race Walking

Like every year at this time in the section Statistics have been published updated charts of the speed performances in race walking  from 1994 to 2015:

- 20 Km. Women - best (1994-2015)

- 20 Km. Women - average of the first 20 (1994-2015)

Short analysis

The performance of Liu Hong in La Coruna of June 6, 2015 has rewritten the history of the world women road walk on the 20 km distance.

To tell the truth, it was not the first performance of the history under the wall of 1:27:00 as in both 2009 (Adler, Feb. 28) or during 2015 (Sochi, Feb. 27) and the Russian Olga Kaniskina (before) and Elmira Alembekova (after) had broken this barrier with their performances of 1:24:56 and 1:24:47 respectively.

The lack of international jury then requested by IAAF had caused such performances could not be recognized as world records, and then the record remained the one obtained by Yelena Lashmanova during the Olympic Games in London 2012.

In Sochi this year, in addition to the performance of Alembekova had also witnessed the brilliant results of Marina Pandakova (1:25:03), Svetlana Vasilyeva (1:25:04) and Vera Sokolova (1:25:38): we have taken into account, because the IAAF considers them in its rankings.

At the moment we are not able to know how the positivity announced of Elmira Alembekova and Vera Sokolova (in addition to that of Anisia Kirdyapkina) will affect the annual rankings if the case some results will be deleted, so, at the moment, we have drawn the graphics of average speed of the first 20 athletes taking into account the results obtained ”in the field".

The performance of Liu Hong (1:24:38) corresponds to an average speed of 14.18 km/h.

It took 21 years since then the world leader ended the double distance with an average speed very similar to that obtained by the average of the top 20 athletes in 10 km during 7he years 1994-1997.

Moreover, at the level of the average of the top 20 athletes, we are seeing the same speed performance registeres in the Olympic year (13,78 km/h).

At Italian level we like to point out that to form the average speed of the top 20 athletes of 2015 have been taken into considerations the performances of three Italian athletes as follow:

13,91 km/h - Anna Eleonora Giorgi: performance of 1:26:17 obtained in Murcia on May 5, 2015

13,63 km/h - Elisa Rigaudo: performance of 1:28:01 obtained in Murcia on May 5, 2015

13,53 km/h - Antonella Palmisano: performance of 1:28:40 obtained Dudince on March 21, 2015

History of average race walking speed in female 10km and 20km between 1994 and 2015, in the section Statistics, or directly download from this link: click here