Like every year at this time in the Statistics section were published graphs updated for trends of speed performances in road walking events.
Compared to the past this year we made two big changes:
• The first was to limit the historical view of the past to 1999, thus excluding from the statistical history the last years in which women still competed in the 10km;
• The second was to start considering the speed of the women in view of the IAAF opening to the 50km women.
Regarding this latter choice, we were allowed to rewrite the past to our knowledge by limiting it to the known trend in the "best athlete" on 50km (which it starts in 2002 and it continues in 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and finally in 2016 and 2017).
Obviously, we did not rewrite the history of the average of the top 20 athletes in 50km (as in 20km) because their statistical reliability would have been completely misleading.
The years taken into consideration were:
• 20 Km. Women - best (from 1999 to 2017)
• 20 Km. Women - average of the first 20 (from 1999 to 2017)
• 50 Km. Women - top (from 1999 to 2017)
• 50 Km. Women – average of the first 20 (from 1999 to 2017)
Short comment
Also in 2017 continued the suspension of RusAthletics (Federation of Russia) from international competitions despite the fact some were admitted to compete as ANA.
But the athletes of that Country have competed as fare as possible at national level. Relevant results have been taken into consideration.
The 2017 average speed of the first 20 women athletes in 50km is 11,01 km/h; we will follow the trend during next years.
At Italian level we like to point out that to form the average speed of the top 20 athletes of 2017 also contribute an Italian female athlete with the following performance
13,86 km/h - Antonella Palmisano with the time of 1:26:36 obtained in London on August 13, 2017.
Graph of speed performance in walking women from 1999 to 2017: click here