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Ugo Frigerio
Born
Frigerio won three Olympic walking titles, the 3km and 10km in Antwerp in 1920 and the 10km in Paris in 1924, then added bronze over 50km in 1932. He was famous for his showmanship, reportedly asking the band to change tunes to suit his rhythm, but the titles rested on a smooth, legal action at a time when judging was even more contested than now. He is the event's first great star.
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Volodymyr Holubnychy
Born
Holubnychy, the Ukrainian who walked for the Soviet Union, won Olympic 20km gold in Rome in 1960 and again in Mexico City in 1968, at altitude, with bronze in 1964 and silver in 1972 in between. Four medals across 12 years in an event decided by both clock and judges is extraordinary consistency, and he added the European title in 1974 aged 38. He set the template for the long careers the walks still produce.
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Maurizio Damilano
Born
Damilano won the 1980 Olympic 20km in Moscow and then two world titles, in 1987 and 1991, the second at 34. His walking was admired for its legality and economy, a clean action that kept him out of trouble with the judges through more than a decade at the top. With Olympic bronze in 1984 and 1988 as well, he anchors Italy's long and proud race walking tradition.
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Kerry Saxby-Junna
Born
Saxby-Junna set a string of world records and world bests in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when women's race walking was only just gaining championship status, and won Commonwealth gold in 1990. The women's walk did not join the Olympic programme until 1992, which limited the global titles available to her at her peak. Her career is a reminder of how many great women walkers of that era are judged by a shorter list of medals than they deserved.
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Jefferson Pérez
Born
Pérez won Ecuador's first ever Olympic medal, 20km gold in Atlanta in 1996, aged 22. Twelve years later he took silver in Beijing, and in between he won three consecutive world titles from 2003 to 2007. That span of global medals, built on a high-cadence, compact action that judges rarely faulted, is why he is a national hero in Ecuador and why the country now produces walkers like Brian Pintado.
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Robert Korzeniowski
Born
Korzeniowski is the most successful Olympic walker of all: 50km gold in Atlanta, Sydney and Athens, plus the 20km title in Sydney 2000, making him the only man to win both distances at one Games. His career began with a judges' disqualification in the closing stages of the 1992 Barcelona 50km, and the precise, legal technique he built afterwards is the reason he was never caught again on the biggest stage.
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Jane Saville
Born
Saville's career contains the event's most famous disqualification. Leading the 20km at the Sydney 2000 Olympics in front of a home crowd, she was shown the final red card just before entering the stadium, with gold seemingly in reach. Rather than fade, she came back to win Commonwealth gold in 2002 and Olympic bronze in Athens in 2004. Her story shows exactly why technique under fatigue matters as much as fitness in this event.
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Liu Hong (race walker)
Born
Liu Hong set the 20km world record of 1:24:38 in 2015, won Olympic gold in Rio and took world titles over 20km and, in Doha in 2019, 50km, a range no other woman has matched at that level. Her 2011 world title was awarded after the original winner was disqualified for doping. Small and very fast-stepping, she is the benchmark for women's walking in the 2010s and a large part of why China became the event's strongest nation.
More about Liu Hong (race walker)9
Jared Tallent
Born
Tallent crossed the line second in the London 2012 50km behind Russia's Sergey Kirdyapkin, and nearly four years later Kirdyapkin's result was annulled for doping and Tallent was awarded the gold, receiving it at a ceremony in Melbourne in 2016. With further Olympic medals in Beijing and Rio, he was one of the most consistent long-distance walkers of his era, and an outspoken campaigner against the doping that cost him his moment on the podium.
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Yohann Diniz
Born
Diniz set the 50km world record of 3:32:33 at the 2014 European Championships in Zurich, a mark unlikely to be challenged now the distance has left the championship programme. He won the 2017 world title in London by more than eight minutes and three European titles, yet his Olympic record is one of frustration, including a collapse mid-race in Rio from which he still got up to finish. He is the purest example of front-running aggression in the walks.
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Matej Tóth
Born
Tóth gave Slovakia its first Olympic athletics gold when he won the Rio 2016 50km, a year after taking the world title in Beijing. His racing was patient and controlled, sitting in the group and keeping his technique tidy while others pushed and collected cards. A biological passport case in 2017 cost him a season before he was cleared without sanction, and he returned to race at the top again.
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Toshikazu Yamanishi
Born
Yamanishi won world 20km titles in 2019 and 2022 and set the 20km world record of 1:16:10 in Kobe in 2025, the clearest example of Japan's methodical walking programme. His home world championships in Tokyo later that year showed the event's knife edge: a time penalty from the judges in the closing stages took him out of contention while he was racing for gold. Watching his races shows how speed and legality have to be balanced kilometre by kilometre.
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Massimo Stano
Born
Stano won the Tokyo 2020 Olympic 20km in the heat of Sapporo, then stepped up to win the first world 35km title in Eugene in 2022. Few walkers have won at both the short and new long championship distances, and his calm racing, waiting for the final kilometres while keeping his action clean, is a model for the modern 35km. He continues Italy's long line of champions from Frigerio and Damilano.
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Antonella Palmisano
Born
Palmisano won the women's 20km at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics on her 30th birthday, a few days after Stano's win made it an Italian double. Her career is one of steady accumulation: world bronze medals in 2017 and 2019, then the Olympic title, then a world 35km medal in Tokyo in 2025 after injuries and a long break. Her smooth, very legal action has kept her largely free of the judges' cards that end so many races.
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Kimberly García
Born
García became Peru's first world champion in any athletics event at Eugene in 2022, and then made it two, winning both the 20km and the new 35km within a week. That double, combining speed at the shorter distance with judgement and control over the longer one, was unprecedented in the women's event. She brought global attention to Andean walking and set the bar that María Pérez has since matched.
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María Pérez (race walker)
Born
Pérez has won the women's 20km and 35km world titles at two consecutive championships, in Budapest in 2023 and Tokyo in 2025, where her 35km winning margin was about three minutes. In between she won Olympic silver over 20km and the new marathon mixed relay gold in Paris with Álvaro Martín. Her strength is relentless, even pace that stays technically clean deep into the race, and she is the dominant walker of the current era.
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Álvaro Martín (race walker)
Born
Martín matched his team-mate María Pérez at the 2023 world championships in Budapest by winning both the men's 20km and 35km, a double that requires recovering from one hard race and producing another within days. In Paris he took 20km bronze and, with Pérez, the first Olympic marathon race walk mixed relay gold. His late-race surges, made without loosening his technique, are a good study in racing within the rules.
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Evan Dunfee
Born
Dunfee is best known for a medal he chose not to chase. In the Rio 2016 50km he was briefly placed third after Japan's Hirooki Arai was disqualified for contact, but Arai was reinstated on appeal and Dunfee declined to pursue a counter-appeal, saying he did not want a medal that way. He won 50km bronze in Tokyo five years later, and in 2025 became world champion over 35km. A career of patience, rewarded late.
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Caio Bonfim
Born
Coached by his mother, herself a former walker, Bonfim spent more than a decade near the top before breaking through: Olympic 20km silver in Paris, then at the 2025 world championships in Tokyo gold over 20km and silver over 35km. He has spoken about being mocked in Brazil for the way race walkers move, which makes his success a strong answer to anyone who treats the event as a novelty.
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