2015 World Championships in Athletics – Men's 20 kilometres walk


The men's 20 kilometres walk at the 2015 World Championships in Athletics was held at the Beijing National Stadium on 23 August.

Summary

From the gun, the three Chinese athletes made it clear they were going to make an effort to take this home race. The effort almost worked, as the group ultimately led by Olympic bronze medalist Wang Zhen held the lead until the bell. At almost that moment, returning bronze medalist Miguel Ángel López had finally worked his way back to the lead. The strain of leading showed on Wang's face as Lopez cruised past. Lopez built upon that lead for the final lap and route back into the stadium. Canadian Benjamin Thorne set the Canadian record on his way to the bronze medal.
A deeper story might be in who was not here. After years of the Viktor Chegin drug related cheating scandal, no Russian athlete entered the race, ending their dominance of world podiums. Recent world record setting Yusuke Suzuki also dropped out near the half way mark with a hip injury. Andrés Chocho was making an effort to challenge the leaders late into the race, but instead was invited to leave the course with a red paddle.

Records

Prior to the competition, the records were as follows:
World record1:16:36Nomi, Japan15 March 2015
Championship record1:17:21Saint-Denis, France23 August 2003
World Leading1:16:36Nomi, Japan15 March 2015
African record1:19:02Eisenhüttenstadt, Germany10 May 1997
Asian record1:16:36Nomi, Japan15 March 2015
North, Central American and Caribbean record1:17:46Eisenhüttenstadt, Germany8 May 1999
South American record1:17:21Saint-Denis, France23 August 2003
European record 1:17:02 Arles, France8 March 2015
Oceanian record1:17:33Cixi, China23 April 2005

Qualification standards

Schedule

Results

The race was started at 08:30.
KEY:NRNational recordPBPersonal bestSBSeasonal best

RankNameNationalityTimeNotes
Miguel Ángel López1:19:14
Wang Zhen1:19:29
Benjamin Thorne1:19:57
Ihor Hlavan1:20:29
Cai Zelin 1:20:42
Caio Bonfim1:20:44
Éider Arévalo1:21:13
Dane Bird-Smith1:21:37
Chen Ding1:21:39
10Kim Hyun-sub1:21:40
11Lebogang Shange1:21:43
12Evan Dunfee1:21:48
13Isamu Fujisawa1:21:51
14Inaki Gomez1:21:55
15Eder Sánchez1:21:56
16Álvaro Martín1:22:04
17Quentin Rew1:22:18
18Hagen Pohle1:22:29
19Massimo Stano1:22:53
20Giorgio Rubino1:23:23
21Ruslan Dmytrenko1:23:37
22José Leonardo Montaña1:23:53
23Dzianis Simanovich1:23:54
24Tom Bosworth1:23:58
25Alexandros Papamichail1:24:11
26Jared Tallent1:24:19
27Federico Tontodonati1:24:33
28Horacio Nava1:24:40
29Diego Garcia1:24:52
30Georgiy Sheiko1:24:58
31Julio César Salazar1:24:58
32Chris Erickson1:25:15
33Kévin Campion1:25:16
34Nils Brembach1:25:21
35Gurmeet Singh1:25:22
36João Vieira1:25:49
37Mauricio Arteaga1:25:50
38Christopher Linke1:26:10
39Ivan Losyev1:26:32
40Anatole Ibáñez1:26:34
41Chandan Singh1:26:40
42Juan Manuel Cano1:27:10
43Marco Antonio Rodríguez1:27:15
44Anton Kučmín1:27:46
45Choe Byeong-kwang1:28:01
46Richard Vargas1:28:18
47Eiki Takahashi1:28:30
48José María Raymundo1:29:01
49Yerko Araya1:29:12
50Kenny Martín Pérez1:29:31
Pavel Chihuán
Perseus Karlström
Baljinder Singh
Yusuke Suzuki
Erik Tysse
Sérgio Vieira
Byun Young-jun
Andrés Chocho
Aliaksandr Liakhovich
Marius Šavelskis
Alex Wright