The women's 20 kilometres walk at the

2015 World Championships in Athletics The 2015 IAAF World Championships ( zh, 第十五届世界田径锦标赛), the fifteenth edition of the IAAF World Championships, were held from 22 to 30 August at the National Stadium in Beijing, China. Forty-three nations won medals, 144 of ...

was held at the

Beijing National Stadium The National Stadium (), also known as the Bird's Nest (), is an 80,000-capacity stadium in Beijing. The stadium was jointly designed by architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron from Basel-based architecture team Herzog & de Meuron, p ...

on 28 August.

Summary

The defending champion

Elena Lashmanova Elena Anatolyevna Lashmanova (russian: Елена Анатольевна Лашманова, born 9 April 1992 in Saransk, Mordovia) is a Russian race walker. In March 2022 she accepted a two-year ban, retroactive to March 2021, and all of her re ...

would not be here, while she serves her drug suspension. In fact the entire Russian team did not compete here amid the drug scandal surrounding their coach

Viktor Chegin Viktor Mikhailovich Chegin (russian: Виктор Михайлович Чёгин; born 3 February 1962 in Bersenevka, Lyambirsky District) is a banned Russian racewalking coach. He was responsible for training all three athletes who swept the med ...

. It looked like world record holder, world leader Liu Hong, walking on home soil was the prohibitive favorite. Liu's one complication was her teammate Xiuzhi Lu. Like in the men's race, the two Chinese walkers took off hard from the start, only

Anežka Drahotová Anežka Drahotová (; born 22 July 1995, Rumburk) is a Czech athletics competitor in racewalking, middle-distance running, and steeplechase, as well an international-level cyclist. She is the Czech record holder for the 20 kilometres walk (1:29 ...

tried to go with them. That lasted about 4 km, from that point on the two walkers were out on their own almost tied by a string, swapping the lead occasionally though Lu was setting the pace the majority of the time. They hit 5K in 22:24; 10K in 44:19 (21:55 split) with a 30-second lead and 15K in 1:06:24 (22:05 split). The chase pack was Lyudmyla Olyanovska, Elisa Rigaudo,

Eleonora Giorgi Eleonora Giorgi (born 21 October 1953) is an Italian actress. Biography Giorgi was born in Rome. Her father was of Italian and English origin. Her mother was of Italian and Hungarian origin. She made her film debut in a minor role in Paolo ...

and Érica de Sena. de Sena was the first to fall off pace around 12K, both of the Italians were later asked to leave the course. Between 10 and 15K the lead actually shrunk to 20 seconds, but the closing 5K in 21:22 settled it for everyone but the two Chinese walkers. They battled neck and neck until just about the time they re-entered the stadium, when Lu seemed to concede to Liu and walked the remainder on the track in her footsteps. With the domestic crowd going crazy, Lu crossed the finish line virtually in Liu's shadow, the separation .26 of a second for the closest finish for a race walk in World Championships history. Because it is a road course, the official times are only accurate to one second so both athlete's times round to the same time. Olyanovska continued to hold on, finishing just 28 seconds back for bronze. The rest of the field finished more than 1:15 behind her. It was the first gold medal for the home team at these championships.

Records

Prior to the competition, the records were as follows:

Qualification standards

Schedule

Results

The race was started at 08:30.Final results
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:2015 World Championships in Athletics - Women's 20 kilometres walk 20 kilometres walk Racewalking at the World Athletics Championships 2015 in women's athletics