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≡ WORLD ATHLETICS COUNCIL ≡
It’s not often that race walking draws headlines, but a major change and potentially momentous change in the walks was a highlight of the World Athletics Council meeting in Monaco:
“The World Athletics Council also approved the introduction of new official senior road distances for race walking events, in order to help put the remarkable achievements by athletes into context, make the events more relatable for fans, and encourage mass participation. The standard senior distances for race walking will therefore change from:
“● 20 km race walk to half marathon race walk (21.0975km)
“● 35 km race walk to marathon race walk (42.195km)
“These changes will be implemented starting 1 January 2026 in senior World Athletics Series events.”
World Athletics President Sebastian Coe (GBR) explained:
“I think we’ve made the right decision today to make it more relatable to Half Marathon and Marathon.
“The fact that you’ve got you’ve got race walkers that will cover that marathon distance in just under three hours, I think sort of places it into a greater context for people watching the event. Our attempts in all our innovations is to lend a little bit more understanding and context to to our fans, and we recognize that at the major games, a large chunk of our fan base that watching that are probably may well be watching the sport for the first time, so our innovation is there’s a very clear rationale behind it. It is to try and make more understandable, more salient, more relevant these events.”
The 20 km walk has been part of the Olympic program since 1956 for men and 2000 for women and the 50 km walk was a men’s event from 1932 to Tokyo 2020, but was not held at Paris 2024. World Athletics changed the 50 km event to 35 km for men and women for the 2022 World Championships.
Now, all of these events are out and the new half marathon and marathon distances will be installed. As for the status of these new distances in the Olympic Games, Coe noted:
“I think that is a question that is best directed at the [IOC] Program Commission and the Sports Department. What we’ve said is race walk is secure in our World Championships.”
The Council approved the introduction of the mixed 4×100 m relay into the World Athletics Relays in 2025.
Bejing (CHN) was confirmed as the site of the 2027 World Athletics Championships – the second straight in Asia after Tokyo 2025 – and the World Athletics Cross Country Championships will be switched from even years to odd years following the 2026 Worlds in Tallahassee, Florida.
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Coe spoke with reporters on Wednesday, following the close of the Council meeting and expressed optimism for where the sport is right now, not only with the sensational Olympic Games in Paris, but record performances in multiple events. Plus:
● “[I]t’s not just been our athletes that have had a jaw-dropping year, our broadcast reach has exceeded anything that we’ve seen in the past. We’ve got an extraordinary level and depth of media coverage and of course, the second series of our Netflix season has just landed and again is our continued attempt to find new audiences, younger audiences and of course, to make sure that where possible, we take athletics into the mainstream.”
● “Acquisition and retention of first-party fan data with a 1.7 million target is hugely important to us. We burst through the million [mark]; we’re within touching distance of 1.2 [million]. 1.7 is is the target and really it’s about overhauling our digital experience.”
As for the new World Athletics Ultimate Championship to close the 2026 season, Coe acknowledged that it’s a work in progress:
“I’m not going to be, you know, naive or coy about it. This is specifically designed. to be fast, flexible and a championships that is run over three nights at three hours at a time and unashamedly designed for television. And that is important. …
“[Y]eah, we couldn’t get everything in there. There’s not every track event in there. There’s not every field event in there and we’ve had to be intuitive about this, but actually these are also data-driven responses, so off the back of Budapest [2023] and the work that our innovation team is doing, and, you know, they spend hours of their day looking and number-crunching around everything from spectator response, the audience journey, the athlete journey. And on this on this occasion, it’s just not possible, nor should we attempt to put every discipline into a three-hour format over the three nights we have. …
“We want this to be a regular occurrence. We want it on a bi-annual basis and yeah, the next edition may be a review of distances, jumps or throws, but at the moment we feel we’ve got the right content for those three, three-hour slugs of time.
“Not perfect. We’re never going to satisfy everybody. But I think let’s see where we get to on this. But you know the only criminality is sitting there doing nothing and hoping that you know it’s all sort of going to work out. It won’t. Our sport has to has to move on.”
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Coe was also asked about the possibility of being elected as the President of the International Olympic Committee next March and what would happen at World Athletics. He was ready for this one:
“[T]hat’s the easy answer. Our governance is really clear. Our Constitution is very clear that that role, should there be a vacancy at World Athletics and bearing in mind that there is also a three-and-a-half, four-month transitional period [until the new IOC President takes over], that role is assumed immediately by the Senior Vice President, and that would be in the very capable hands of Ximena Restrepo.
“We have a very clear guideline … We know exactly what would happen … it’s frankly what we describe as a vacancy policy. So if anybody in any of our government structures walked away, we are absolutely clear about how we replace and move on seamlessly, which is the way any good organizations should be structured.”
Restrepo, 55, was elected as a World Athletics Vice President in 1999 and was a star women’s 400 m runner for Colombia, winning the Olympic bronze in the 1992 Barcelona Games. A naturalized citizen of Chile, she was the 1991 NCAA women’s 400 m champion for Nebraska.
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The Council happily removed eight countries from its “watch list” for possible competition manipulations: Albania, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkey and Uzbekistan.
It also announced a significant effort to campaign against gender-based violence, including outside of the sport, through raising awareness, education and lobbying for change.
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