Until a few years ago in some European Countries (few to be honest) athletes were still competing on the track on a classic distance of 20,000m. walk.
The history of the 20,000m track walk is sprinked with the names of "hall of fame" and is referred in particular to the city of Fana (Bergen) where for years between 1980 and 1994 athletes like Ernesto Canto (MEX), Stefan Johannson (SWE), Bernardo Segura (MEX), Ronald Weigel (GER), Aleksey Pershin (RUS) and Walter Arena (ITA) wrote beautiful pages of race walk and signed interesting results under 1:19:30.
Even in China was in that time the custom to compete on 20,000m. track walk and in Beijing in a memorable race on April 7, 1994 two Chinese (Lingtang Bo, and Mingjun Tan) signed a historic double win under 1:19:00, while their teammate Shaoguo Chen in 1:19:16.0 had to be conted with third place.
In recent years the best result obtained on 20,000m track walk is that of Yohann Diniz (FRA) who on May 25, 2014 signed in Bogny-sur-Meuse (FRA) an interesting 1:19:42.0 which still today represents the tenth world performance on the distance.
In the following photo the ten best performances:
In the last few years the 20,000m track walk charm has definitely faded in Europe. Italy, which kept a race of its Club race walk Championship with 20.000m track walk, abandoned it in 2013. The last European Countries to resist were Sweden (last race in 2015) and France whose last 20.000m on track dates back to November 6, 2016 in Toulouse: who knows that they do not return to propose it?
In 2017, in the men's world list of this event, only four European athlete appears in the first athletes in the World list at the limit of 1:37:30 ! They are Ato Ibanez (SWE) in 20th place, Anders Hansson (SWE) in 21st place and Elmo Koivunen (FIN) in 48th place.
Perhaps it is not entirely fair to lose traditions.