Walkers like Diego García Carrera or Paul McGrath and trainers like José Antonio Quintana criticized the decision announced this Saturday by World Athletics and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of organize a new mixed team relay test for the 2024 Paris Games to replace the 35-kilometer walk.
The Marathon Race Walk mixed relay will feature 25 teams, each consisting of one male and one female athletewhich will complete the marathon distance (42.195 km) in four sections of approximately the same distance.
Each athlete will complete two sections of over 10 kilometers eachalternating masculine, feminine, masculine, feminine.
“Making a decision like this just a year before the Olympic Games is a real mistake. Half of my specialty colleagues (long-distance specialists) are outside Paris. Things cannot be done in that way. The march deserves RESPECT”, Diego García Carrera, bronze medalist in the last European Championship in Munich over 20 kilometers, declared on Twitter.
Paul McGrath, bronze winner in the 10-kilometer walk at the U-20 World Cups, also showed his discomfort on social networks. “It is shameful and disrespectful to our discipline. They are destroying the dreams of hundreds of marchers and the worst part is that they know it.”
José Antonio Quintana is emphatic. “Summary: embarrassing and disappointing. We may like it or not, but what is indisputable is that deadlines are NOT being met and now there are NO regulations”.
The Grenadian Paquillo FernandezNow retired, he won a running silver medal at the 2004 Athens Games and was runner-up three times in the world. “Laughter and disrespect at the World March“, he stated.
The new Olympic test, the Ekiden, will take place on the same route as the individual walking events, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower in the center of Paris, and will be completed in about three hours. The requirement that each athlete complete two stages will add an endurance component to the race.
The team qualification route for this new event will be published shortly by World Athletics and the International Olympic Committee.
Source: La Verdad
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