Friday Funny: The Serious Side and Long History of Competitive Race Walking

An article by Marissa Payne details the sport of race waling, which has provoked more than one joke on Twitter about the participants looking like they are making a beeline for the bathroom.

As Payne notes, however, there is a very serious technique involved with mastering the sport—technique that differs greatly from running:

For starters, race walking isn’t just slow running. It requires an entirely different technique. Whereas you can bend both your knees however you like in running, in race walking the leading leg must be completely straightened when it makes contact with the ground and stay that way until it’s lifted again. The other major difference from running is that race walkers must have at least one foot touching the ground at all times. If race walkers violate either of those two rules, a judge, who closely follows the athletes throughout the race (that’s either 20 or 50 kilometers in the Olympics), will dole out a red-card violation.

The history of the sport is also of great interest to fans of walking and also maybe pedestrian advocates.

The article calls on Matthew Algeo, author of the book Pedestrianism, to describe the sport’s roots. According to Algeo, race walking (pedestrianism as it was known then) "was far more popular than running, too, in the past." Races spanned hundreds of miles—sometimes even 1,000 miles—and large wagers were riding on the results. Hence the sport's addition to the Olympic games, according to 

By the turn of the century, “pedestrianism” became so popular that it was added to the 1904 Olympics as part of the decathlon. Not satisfied, race walkers finally got their own event in 1932, but it was a far cry from the thousand-mile races of the past. The event was only (and, I use that word relatively) 50 kilometers.

As a parting gift, we'd like to remind everyone that Bryan Cranston, of fame and critical acclaim for his role on the show Breaking Bad, once played up the sport of race walking to humorous effect in his previous role on Malcolm in the Middle.