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WALK NEWS Race walking year reaches climax TIM WATT reports from the race walking scene, an area of the sport struggling to live up to its past glory days THE final RWA title of the year takes place this Sunday – the RWA 50km championships, held as for the last two years from Earls Colne Country Club in Essex. Though a bit out of the way, the course is flat and traffic-free with the only distraction along the straight upand- down roadway likely to be low flying golf balls and light aircraft taking off from the airfield perpendicular to the roadway. Unfortunately, Britain’s standard of 50km walking has declined to lower than when US Air Force Mustang fighters fly from the airbase. The RWA 50km has been won by four Olympic champions: Tommy Green was victorious in the first National 50km in 1930; Harold Whitlock won six times between 1933 and 1939; Sweden’s John Llunggren took the title in 1954; and Don Thompson won the event a record eight times between 1956 and 1966. Ilford AC’s Scott Davis will be defending his title with Coventry’s Steve Arnold the probable main challenger. But such is the decline in British race walking that this year’s winning time will probably be slower than Tommy Green’s time of 4:35:36 walked 66 years ago. With the EAA European Cup to be held in this country next year UK Athletics’ selectors will hope that Commonwealth Games 20km representative Andy Penn will make a successful transition to the longer distance for next year and Steve Hollier can make a comeback.
BRITAIN’S brightest young race walk prospect Nick Ball will be sitting out the RWA 10km contested during the 50km. Ball’s focus for his season was selection for the IAAF World Junior Championships in Beijing but the tough UK selection standard of 42:30 for 10km (where the IAAF entry standard was 44:05) proved beyond him at just 18 years old. In 2006, Ball set three road and two track personal bests at 10km, exceeded the IAAF qualifying standard four times and set a British junior 3000m track record, plus he made an early 20km debut in a time of 94:22. However, the high point of the season remained his 11th placing in the junior 10km at the IAAF World Cup in May, in a time of 43:36. It was scant consolation when the winning time of Xiangdong Bo of China last month turned out to be 20 seconds slower than the UKA selection time. Full article in this week's Athletics Weekly, - available in WH Smith and all good newsagents, or on subscription
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Ball looks ahead
