TRENDS AND EFFORT DISTRIBUTION OF MEN’S 50 KM RACE WALKING

ABSTRACT Race walking has been a highly technical event in the Olympic games since 1908. In the whole history of the discipline, the rules of walking define the technique and respectively the result. Since the last change of the rules in 1996, the results in 50 km race walking have constantly developed. No matter the facts, the Olympic committee decided to change the race distance to 35 km. The research aims to find reasons why they did this by analyzing the effort distribution of elite race-walking competitors in major championships. Tasks of the research are: 1) To analyze the development of the results in world championships; 2) To research some trends in effort distribution of elite race walkers. Methods: To accomplish the research task, we made a literature review and statistical analyses of the data of the last five major championships. Result: The champions have greater average speed than the other athletes. All of the first ten competitors have negative splits e.g., faster second half of the race but the medalists are the only athletes that maintain a speed that is similar to their average in the last 10-15 km. The leaders in the ranking have slower starting splits than the other walkers. Conclusion: Better results can be achieved if the athlete starts a little bit slower than the average speed and steadily increases it till the end of the race as much as possible.