(from the Fidal website)
10.000 mt. women
Welcome Eleonora Giorgi. The first title of the opening day of the Italian Championships at the renowned Grezar Stadium in Trieste goes to the national recordwoman of 20km.
After a surgery in December, she was not competing from the Rio 2016 Olympics. Today, the athlete of Fiamme Azzurre won the 10,000m track walk with a new personal best: 43:56.95, 37” better than 44:33.56 obtained in Milan in 2013.
Behind the 27-year-old, the other athlete of Lombardy already pre-selected for the London World Cup, Valentina Trapletti, second in 44:04.94 with over 2 minutes of new personal best on 21-year-old Nicole Colombi.
The races unfortunately stumbled just as the last walkers moved to the finish line due to a nifty that unleashed on Trieste. The men's race scheduled for tonight will be held tomorrow at 9:30.
10.000 mt. men
The rain of last night has left room for a good morning of sunshine and so even though with half a day of waiting, the walkers can take their hard work.
For Federico Tontodonati comes the tricolor poker on the 10km track. Prior to today, the Air Force Piedmontese had worn the Italian champion shirt on this distance in 2011, 2012 and 2015.
This morning, the 27-year-old blue cuts the finish line in 40:34.09 ten seconds from four years ago (40: 24.30 in Borgaretto) personal best
The podium is joined by Leonardo Dei Tos (Athletic Club 96 Alperia) 41:17.49 and Vito Minei (Fiamme Oro) 41:27.67.
It was a pity for the DQ, after more than half the race, of Matteo Giupponi (Carabinieri) and Massimo Stano (Fiamme Oro), up to that time in the lead of the competition.
Some technical considerations
When in 1999 the IAAF Walking Committee decided to publicize the reason (bent knee or loss of contact) of the red card charged by the single athlete did it with the main aim of giving the athlete the opportunity to correct during the race, but above all, with the help of his coach, even in future races.
We have just some news ago emphasized the importance of correct reporting.
Today, let us point out that we continued to see a disqualifications board which at the time we observed it was over 80% made up of bent knee, while in only three cases the technical error reported by the judges was that of the loss of contact.
Since we are in any case amongst those who still accept the jury's work, we can not help but notice that in some cases this percentage does not exactly reflect what was seen in the field during the race.
The future credibility of race walking goes through this additional effort to try to be able to give the correct meaning to the technical error, otherwise bent knee or loss of contact would remain merely a pure mechanical exercise that would be of no use for both the Athlete and his Coach and would lose most of the purpose for which it had been introduced.
(Photos by Giancarlo Colombo for Fidal)
Full results in the section Results or download directly from this link: click here
More photos in the photo album by Giancarlo Colombo for Fidal: click here
Eleonora Giorgi in Trieste