Speed walking is a competitive sport in which contestants race on foot. The rules of speed walking, most recently updated in 1995 by the International Association of Athletics Federations, are primarily enforced to clearly differentiate speed walking from running.
No Loss of Contact
When you run you are briefly "airborne," which means that neither of your feet is on the ground as you place one foot in front of the other. When taking a step forward in speed walking, however, your back foot cannot leave the ground until your front foot has touched the ground. If both your feet are visibly off the ground, you may be disqualified. Consequently, as you transition from one foot to the other when walking, make sure there is be a brief moment of "double contact." This means that the toe of the back foot and the heel of the front foot must be simultaneously in contact with the ground.
Visibility of Contact
A speed walking judge must rely only on her eyesight rather than on slow-motion video replay to ensure contact with the ground at all times. This is because at the elite level, virtually all speed walkers experience "flight phasing," a very brief moment when both feet are off the ground, according to race walking judge Gary Westerfield. Therefore, a speed walker may be disqualified for loss of contact only if the infraction is clearly visible to a judge. Potential judges must agree to take an eye exam to ensure their vision is sharp enough to detect loss of contact in real time.
Straightened Legs
When you take a step forward in speed walking, your advancing leg must stay straightened from the moment it touches the ground until your body is in the vertical position. The purpose of this prolonged leg extension is to clearly differentiate speed walking from running. This rule also differentiates speed walking from normal walking; when you walk normally, the knee of your advancing leg flexes naturally after making contact with the ground. In speed walking, that would be a breech of the rules.
Visibility of Straightened Legs
Once again, judges must rely on their eyesight to ensure that speed walkers maintain straightened legs. If you judge a speed walking competition, you may have difficulty identifying whether walkers with bent or knobby knees have straightened legs when they touch the ground. Westerfield recommends that you look at a walker's quadriceps instead of his whole leg in order to determine if his advancing leg is straightened. If there is little tension across the quadriceps when his foot makes contact with the ground, then the leg is straightened and the step is legal.
Member Comments