uiHere we are, the moment of truth has arrived.
In the sadness of one of the last 50km of the long history of race walking, but it has arrived.
Someone compares this 50km of Doha to a lottery, similar to that of the Olympic Games in Melbourne 1956 where Norman Read came out of the top hat after he was not selected for Great Britain (and emigrated to New Zealand to participate) going to win with the Kiwi in 4:30:43.
At the time, Read had passed to the intermediate km with the following split:
- 10km: 51:26
- 20km: 1:44:18 (52:52; but the two Russians Yevgeniy Maskinskov and Georgiy Klimov in 1:42:16 were leading the race)
- 30km: 2:38:19 (54:01; with Maskinskov and Klimov still leading in 2:35:50)
- 40km: 3:32:56 (54:37; only 47" after Maskinskov while Klimov was on the way to ababdon)
- Norman Read closed in 57:47 after passing the Russian to 42km
These are unimaginable marks today, but they give a sense of the temporal distribution of fatigue.
In more recent times in the scorching hot the 50km of the Olympic Games of Athens 2004 took place, with the third victory of Robert Korzeniowski in 3:38:46.
Korzeniowski always leading the race won with the following split:
- 10km: 44:48
- 20km: 1:27:54 (43:06)
- 30km: 2:10:47 (42:47)
- 40km: 2:53:42 (42:55)
- to close in 45:04
But tonight in Doha there is the unexplored. In addition to the boiling hot, the humidity and the desert dust that makes breathing difficult, there is the biological clock that makes you compete almost at night, while in the past everyone was used to it in the early morning.
In women we will see how and when the real battle between the Chinese Li Maocuo and Rui Liang and the two leading Europeans Eleonora Giorgi (ITA) and Julia Takacs (ESP) will begin.
We expect a winner mark between 3:40:00 and 3:45:00 in men and between 4:07:00 and 4:11:00 in women.
We'll see if we got it right.