Talk:Racewalking

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Contents 1 Photo 2 Calories 3 Merge power walking? 4 Race walking vs Racewalking 5 Pedraza vs. Saville 6 "[Racewalking] is said to exceed the caloric requirements of running" 7 History of racewalking 8 speeds

[edit] Photo

Interestingly, in the photo, the lead walker has neither of his feet in contact with the ground. - Quirk 09:33, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Well spotted. I wonder if he was DQed later. Of course lifting is a reality of the sport and theyhave to have judges along the whole route to enforce it. Didn't one of the womens race walkers get DQ'ed in the stadium and consequently lost the gold medal? David D. (Talk) 12:42, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Now noted in the caption. —Michael Shields 06:11, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

My father(Rael's Racewalker), who is a United States Masters Champion, has on many occassions pointed out that the specifics of the rules state it has to be visible by the naked eye. Here's an excerpt from the article itself, "...at any time at least one foot has contact with the ground (to the naked eye)". And as to the story of being DQ'd, I heard this one guy won a European race, and it was such a big deal, that he was on international television when the president of his country called him, and right in mid-conversation with him, a judge came and gave him a big Red warning that lost the entire meet for him. ON NATIONAL TELEVISION! Bummer... —photoactivist 16:02, 07 December 2005 (UTC)

it's not unusal for judges to lay on the ground to check for lifts

The second photos description is written in French. We should probably translate that to English being that the article is written in English. Using Google's language tools (http://translate.google.com/), I figure it should say "walker in the amateurs competition". Objections? crozewski 11:44, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the walker in front, seemingly lifting, is Jesús Ángel Garcia of Spain. 217.102.250.57 08:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Not only the lead walker is lifting: the 4th is too.--82.66.246.152 00:10, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Calories

I will take out this sentence: "Of course, the pace is slower than the same person could run the distance so time expended to burn the same calories is greater." There is nothing "of course" about this claim. Since walking at such high speeds is so inefficient, the calories burned per unit time could be higher than running at a faster speed. Further, it slips in a confusing reference to the same person running -- we don't actually know that race walkers are any good at all at running! If any of this material is re-introduced, it should be backed up by references, preferably including actual data about calories, walking, and running. -kd

The lead walker is probably the eventual winner, Francesco Fernandez of Spain. This was presumably taken early in the race when adrenalin was rampant in each walker's system and I'd say if you took footage of every walker here you'd see broken contact at some point, not because they mean to cheat or transgress but because this is a 'sprint' event and loss of contact with the leaders is critical. The arguable point, I'd say, is whether the contact loss is severe enough to be spotted by a judge - in which case it can be argued that unfair advantage clearly is being gained by the offender, since the amount of time needed for a judge's naked eye to register that contact has been lost would allow an offending competitor quite a long 'float' period. - StuC5 StuC5 13:55, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge power walking?

As far as I can tell, power walking just seems like a bad professional way of race/speed walking, like what jogging is to running. Would anyone be against it redirecting here and merging a mention of power-walking into the article? Or does it warrant something separate because of the focus on caloric expenditure and range of motion over speed? Tyciol 14:55, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Race walking vs Racewalking

Is there a space or not? Throughout the article there's no space, but the article itself has one. If there's indeed no space, suggest we move the article to racewalking? Tyciol 15:01, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pedraza vs. Saville

Without getting petty about it I would have thought that the Saville incident was far better known. For one, it was a potential gold medal, for another, it was far more recent, and finally a disqualification is almost always going to attract more attention than a non-disqualification. --Robert Merkel 10:13, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "[Racewalking] is said to exceed the caloric requirements of running"

I marked it with {{fact}}, but the thing here is that the sentence does not make sense. What are we comparing exactly? Running and racewalking at the same speed? In that case, e.g. swimming tops both, and all these sports "beat" cycling. But that does not mean anything: it does not make cycling "easy" and racewalking "hard". GregorB 19:49, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Why is this even included in the section about Olympic racewalking? How is this sentence somehow related to the Olympics? This is silly and should not be included as is in the first place, let alone debating its veracity.18.244.7.56 15:17, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

We are comparing calories burnt across the same distance, not the "hardness" of a sport/way of moving. I'd like to see some external source confirming the information stated in the sentence.

[edit] History of racewalking

I came here wanting to know more on the history of racewalking, but there is not a single line on that matter. Can somebody provide some facts on the origins of the sport, the founder, if there is one (since I don't think this is such an old sport), the origins and changes of the rules etc. Anybody? --Vitriden 01:47, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] speeds

It's a bit silly that there aren't any average or record speeds given on this page. Average walking speed is 2-3 mph; how does race or speed walking compare?--24.19.59.78 (talk) 21:17, 29 April 2008 (UTC)