In the first of two days of the IAAF Council Meeting which is being held in Monaco, there have been some important decisions if to the International Federation related to race walking.
2018 IAAF World Race Walking Team Championships
The original hosts of the 2018 edition of these championships was Cheboksary, Russia, a decision which was made by Council in November 2013. However, as the Russian Athletics Federation is currently suspended from IAAF membership, Council decided at their last meeting during the Rio 2016 Olympic Games to reallocate the championships.
Following the opening of the bidding process on 2 September, the IAAF received expressions of interest from six cities (Guyaquil, ECU; Hammamet, TUN; Kiev, UKR; Monterrey, MEX; Taicang, CHN; and Tokyo, JPN) but only Taicang submitted a formal bid by the deadline of 15 November.
Taicang, which is situated in Jiangsu province, was host to the 2014 edition of these championships (then called the IAAF World Race Walking Cup) and is the Chinese leg of the annual IAAF Race Walking Challenge.
Following a presentation by a delegation from Taicang and the Chinese Athletics Association headed by Han Biao, Vice-Mayor of Taicang Municipal People's Government and IAAF Council Member Zhaocai Du, Council unanimously awarded Taicang the 2018 edition.
New World Record Event
Council approved the criteria for the women’s 50km race walk to become an official world record event, bringing athletics one step closer to complete gender equality across all its disciplines.
From 1 January 2017, the IAAF will accept the first performances equal to or less than 4:30:00 as having fulfilled all conditions for a world record* as the inaugural women’s 50km race walk world record.
Race walk electronic detection system
The electronic detection system project to create a definitive judging system for race walking events has now moved to the design stage with contracts signed to construct two preindustrial demonstration prototypes to detect loss of contact by race walkers. One will be used in training and another for competition. The timeline for completion of the project is 18 months.
The results of this project will then be considered by the Race Walking Committee in order to draw up a rule change proposal which would then need to be considered by the Technical Committee and approved by Council. The goal is to be able to trial a system in competitions ahead of the 2019 IAAF World Championships.
(Source of photos by Philippe Fitte for IAAF)
The course of Taicang 2014