This year we wanted to enrich our area dedicated to statistics by providing our readers with an additional tool for analyzing the individual specialties of race walking.
We wanted to call him with a name similar to one quite fashionable in these years in the financial markets: "negative spread".
Data selection standard
- For every specialty of race walk we have first of all chosen the best ten performances in the world as they appear from the official lists of the IAAF
- We did not take into consideration the Areas that did not have a sufficient number (at least five) of performances during the whole five-year period
- We have limited our choice to the last five years, starting from 2014 up to and including 2018
- We have analyzed for now only 50km men, event that we considered the most interesting for the differences that can offer and for the debate that is taking place on the same. In the next days we will do the same for the 20km men and 20km women. As for the 50km women, we expect to have a data series of at least another two years.
- The average speed (in every single Olympic distance) of these ten best performances in the world is the reference mark for every single year
- We then analyzed for each Area the ten best performances (or less if there are not ten, but at least five) obtaining the relative average speed for each Area. The difference in terms of km/hr between that obtained by analyzing the data of the first athletes in the world and those of the top ten athletes in each area is what we have called "negative spread".
Example
At world level, in 2014 we recorded an average speed of the first 10 walkers in the world on the 50km was equal to 14.11 km/hr.
This speed (then never more achieved in the five-year period) is certainly influenced by the impressive performances obtained in Zurich by Yohann Diniz (3:32:33), Matej Toth (3:36:21) and Ivan Noskov (3:37:41)
In the same year 2014 in Asia the average speed of the first 10 walkers in that area was 13.21 km/hr.
In particular, the three athletes of Japan Takayuki Tanii (3:30:19), Hiroki Arai (3:40:34) and Takuya Yoshida (3:43:02) contributed to his achievement.
The "negative spread 2014" Asia-World is equal to -0.90 km/hr.
Another example
During 2018, the average speed of the first 10 walkers in the world on the 50km stood at 13.39 km/hr, while in 2014 it was 14.11 km/hr.
In Asia, compared to 13.21 km / hr in 2014, an average speed of the first 10 walkers of that area of 13.25 km/hr was recorded in 2018.
The "negative spread 2018" Asia-World is equal to -0.14 km/hr.
But there is another interesting consideration to make.
And it is expressed exemplifying in the following table always referred to Asia-World:
| 50km men - average speed | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 |
| | | | | | |
| World average speed | 14,11 | 13,98 | 13,77 | 14,07 | 13,39 |
| Asia average speed | 13,21 | 13,32 | 13,38 | 13,19 | 13,25 |
| Negative Spread | -0,90 | -0,66 | -0,39 | -0,28 | -0,14 |
It is all too clear how much the gap between Asia and World is decreasing as a result of two factors: the decline in European performance between 2014 and 2018 was particularly affected by Yohann Diniz's performance combined with growth, particularly in 2018, of the Japan battleship.
On the other hand, it was to be expected that in 2018: to form the world average base (average performances of ten first) there are six athletes from Asia (5 from Japan and 1 from China) and four athletes from Europe (one each between Russia, Slovakia, Finland and Ukraine).
We leave our readers in the following link the consulation of the chart and the complete table of average speeds in the five-year period and the considerations they would like to make.