Race walkers achieve greatness at own pace
Canadians’ rise coming with little fanfare, as they compete in Rio with shot at winning medals
VANCOUVER— Winning a world championship medal in athletics is second only to winning one at the Olympics — it’s a huge deal, and it can change an athlete’s life.
Sprint sensation Andre De Grasse won a 100-metre bronze medal at the worlds last August and promptly signed a multimillion dollar shoe contract.
And what of Canada’s Ben Thorne, who also won a bronze medal last year in Beijing? It was this country’s first world championship medal for race walking, and he broke the national record in the 20-kilometre event in the process.
“I got first dibs on beds,” a smiling Thorne said, referring to the hotel rooms he shares with his training partners.
As it turns out, that wasn’t a perk he kept long, because Inaki Gomez broke his record in March.
Race walking, with its distinctive hipswinging, straight-legged gait, is very popular in Russia, but many of its top athletes have been banned for doping.
But the sport has never stirred much passion among Canadian sports fans.
It’s that lack of love here at home that laid the groundwork for the nation’s surprising current race-walking status: Our athletes are actually quite good.
When race walking was dropped from the development-level Canada Games, Gerry Dragomir, a Vancouver accountant turned race walker and then coach, decided the only option was to become good enough to compete globally.
As a result, Racewalk West was born in 2001 with a simple if cheeky stated club goal of “total global domination.”
“Every time we do something it is one step closer (to) getting there.” GERRY DRAGOMIR RACE-WALKING COACH, ON THE GOAL OF ‘TOTAL GLOBAL DOMINATION’
“Everyone laughs at it,” Dragomir says. “But every time we do something it is one step closer (to) getting there. It’s really easy to measure against.”
Thorne, Gomez and Evan Dunfee train together with Dragomir, and all have qualified for this summer’s Rio Olympics in the 20-kilometre event. Dunfee plans to double up, having qualified for the 50-kilometre race as well. Two other Canadian race walkers, Rachel Seamen and Mathieu Bilodeau, will also compete in Rio.
It’s March, and it’s pouring rain, windy and dark when Thorne arrives on his bike — he didn’t want to waste $4 on the bus — at a high school track for an evening training session with Dragomir.
Despite the chill in the air, Thorne is sweating from the effort within minutes.
As much as people often mock the hip-swinging stride of race walkers, there’s no denying their speed. The Canadian 20-kilometre record stands at one hour, 19 minutes and 20 seconds, which amounts to a subfour minute kilometre, a pace most recreational runners can’t achieve.
Canada’s race walkers — like every other elite athlete heading to Rio — are seeking their version of faster, higher, stronger. In race walking, that means going as fast as possible within the rules of this judged sport, and that is no easy feat.
After his workout, Thorne and Dragomir are happy to get out of the rain at a nearby restaurant to talk about what brought them to this sport and how their plans for global domination are going. Dunfee and Gomez won gold and silver at the Toronto Pan Am Games against a strong international field, and then Thorne, the rookie of the group, bested them both to take bronze at the worlds.
“They’re not that far from world domination anymore,” Dragomir says. “It’s fun.”
Their final big test before Rio takes place in Rome Saturday at the IAAF World Race Walking Team Championships.
Gomez, Thorne and Dunfee, who holds the Canadian 50-kilometre record and held the 20-kilometre title before Thorne, are all looking for strong individual races and a podium finish as a team.
“We’re anticipating something special in Rome, and the best bed will be up for grabs,” Dragomir predicts.
It must be said, race waking is rarely someone’s first choice of sport. Dunfee was a runner, Gomez a swimmer and Thorne both a cross- country skier and runner, but each found they had a talent for race walking. As it usually does, that passion came along with success and travelling the world in a Team Canada uniform.
“It’s not the most glamorous sport but it’s what I ended up with, so I’ve got to take advantage of it,” Thorne says. He almost didn’t. Thorne toyed with the idea of quitting after being disqualified at the 2012 world junior championships in Barcelona for lifting — a violation of the requirement for one foot to appear to be in contact with the ground at all times.
“I had this dumb-ass plan to blow everyone away in the first five kilometres and do what no one else was expecting,” he says, recalling that race. “It didn’t go well . . . I got DQ’d at four K.”
“It was almost five K,” Dragomir offers helpfully.
After sitting at home watching Gomez break the Canadian record at the London Olympics, Thorne can- celled those early retirement plans and worked to improve his technique.
With race walking it’s not just how fast athletes can move — they can all run faster than they can walk — it’s how fast they can go while maintaining form, and that can be hard to gauge, both for athletes and judges.
Thorne solved the problem by removing the grey area.
“To keep my feet low to the ground, I would scuff my foot when I came through. Now my feet are naturally lower and I don’t want to waste the energy,” says Thorne, who has taken ayear off his mechanical engineering degree to train for Rio.
This team has been slowly breaking into the top 15 internationally. And given how many athletes get disqualified over the final few kilometres, anything can happen. But last year’s medal haul at the worlds in Beijing was still a bit unexpected.
“We were supposed to fly under the radar until Rio,” Dragomir said.
That no longer appears to be the case for the Canadians.