Yang Jiayu chopped 49 seconds off the world record to win the 20km race walk in 1:23:49* at the Chinese Race Walking Championships in Huangshan on Saturday (20).
The 2017 world champion finished comfortably ahead of Olympic champion Liu Hong, whose 1:24:27 runner-up clocking was also inside the previous world record.
World silver medallist Qieyang Shenjie was third in a PB of 1:24:45. It’s the first 20km race in which more than one woman has finished inside 1:25.
On a landmark day for Chinese race walking, Wang Kaihua won the men’s 20km event in a national record of 1:16:54, a performance that moves the 27-year-old to third on the world all-time list, just 18 seconds shy of the world record.
*Subject to the usual ratification procedure
WORLD ATHLETICS
