1976 Summer Olympics / Athletics - 20 km walk (men)

sport	athletics
discipline	20 km walk
gender	Men
Attendees	36 athletes from 21 countries
Competition location	Olympic Stadium Montreal (start and finish)
Competition phase	July 23, 1976
Medalist Daniel Bautista ( MEX )   Hans-Georg Reimann ( GDR )   Peter Frenkel ( GDR )

The men's 20 km walk at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal was held on July 23, 1976. The start and finish was the Montreal Olympic Stadium . 36 athletes took part, 34 of whom made it to the finish.

The Olympic champion was the Mexican Daniel Bautista , who won ahead of the two GDR goers Hans-Georg Reimann and Peter Frenkel .

The third GDR walker, Karl-Heinz Stadtmüller , was fourth. Gerhard Weidner and Bernd Kannenberg started
for the Federal Republic of Germany . Kannenberg had to give up the race, Weidner took 18th place. Walkers from Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein did not take part.

Existing records

World record	1:23:40 h	Daniel Bautista ( Mexico )	Bydgoszcz , Poland	May 30, 1976
Olympic record	1: 26: 42.4 h	Peter Frenkel ( GDR )	20 km walk from Munich , Federal Republic of Germany	August 31, 1972

Note: World records were not set in street walking because of the different track conditions.

Routing

The race started in the Montreal Olympic Stadium . After one and a half laps, the route led out onto a circuit through the botanical garden to the west of the stadium , which had to be completed four times. Then it went back to the stadium, where the goal was after a last lap on the track.

Race course

Date: July 23, 1976, 5:30 p.m. local time ( UTC − 5 )

In addition to the Mexican Daniel Bautista, who set a new world record at the end of May, the favorites were the three GDR walkers Peter Frenkel, 1972 Olympic champion , Hans-Georg Reimann and Karl-Heinz Stadtmüller. Bernd Kannenberg, Federal Republic of Germany, also belonged to the extended circle of medal contenders. Four years earlier, he had won the 50 km competition, which was not on the program here, and in 1974 became vice European champion in the 20 km walk . In front of him at the European Championships was the Soviet athlete Volodymyr Holubnytschyj, four-time medalist, a. a. Olympic champion from 1960 and 1968 , who also competed here again, for the fifth time at the Olympic Games. At 40, he was the fourth oldest participant. The oldest walker was 50-year-old Canadian Alex Oakley, who was also taking part in the Olympic Games for the fifth time.

The field left the stadium still somewhat closed. But even here the pace was pushed, the three GDR walkers and Bautista took over the reins from the start. So the field fell apart more and more into small groups. A leadership group was formed in the front, ultimately consisting of Bautista, Reimann and Frenkel. All the others had nothing to do with the exit in the front rows, Kannenberg had to give up. At 17 km, the Mexican accelerated again and apparently easily pulled away from his two remaining opponents. Daniel Bautista reached the stadium with a clear lead and in the end went safely to the Olympic victory. He improved the existing Olympic record by more than two minutes. Behind it, Reimann had meanwhile left Peter Frenkel. Hans-Georg Reimann won the silver medal a little more than half a minute behind. Karl-Heinz Stadtmüller was fourth, ahead of the Mexican Raúl González and the Italian Armando Zambaldo. Volodymyr Holubnytschyj, who was so successful in the past, came in seventh again.

Daniel Bautista won the first Mexican gold medal in Olympic athletics.

Bottom line

space	Surname	nation	time	annotation
1	Daniel Bautista	Mexico	1: 24: 40.6 h	OR
2	Hans-Georg Reimann	GDR	1: 25: 13.8 h
3	Peter Frenkel	GDR	1: 25: 29.4 h
4th	Karl-Heinz Stadtmüller	GDR	1: 26: 50.6 h
5	Raúl González	Mexico	1: 28: 18.2 h
6th	Armando Zambaldo	Italy	1: 28: 25.2 h
7th	Volodymyr Holubnychy	Soviet Union	1: 29: 24.6 h
8th	Vittorio Visini	Italy	1: 29: 31.6 h
9	Gérard Lelièvre	France	1: 29: 53.6 h
10	Roberto Buccione	Italy	1: 30: 40.0 h
11	Brian Adams	Great Britain	1: 30: 46.2 h
12	Ross Haywood	Australia	1: 30: 59.2 h
13	Otto Bartsch	Soviet Union	1: 31: 12.4 h
14th	Olly Flynn	Great Britain	1: 31: 42.4 h
15th	Viktor Semyonov	Soviet Union	1: 31: 59.0 h
16	Imre Stankovics	Hungary	1: 32: 06.6 h
17th	Jan Ornoch	Poland	1: 32: 19.2 h
18th	Gerhard Weidner	BR Germany	1: 32: 56.8 h
19th	Ernesto Alfaro	Colombia	1: 33: 13.8 h
20th	Ron Laird	United States	1: 33: 27.6 h
21st	Boguslaw Duda	Poland	1: 33: 53.4 h
22nd	Larry Walker	United States	1: 34: 19.4 h
23	Marcel Jobin	Canada	1: 34: 33.4 h
24	Vinko Galušić	Yugoslavia	1: 34: 46.8 h
25th	Godfried Dejonckheere	Belgium	1: 35: 03.8 h
26th	Bengt Simonsen	Sweden	1: 35: 31.8 h
27	Santiago Fonseca	Honduras	1: 36: 07.0 h
28	Lucien Faber	Luxembourg	1: 36: 21.2 h
29	Todd Scully	United States	1: 36: 37.4 h
30th	Paul Nihill	Great Britain	1: 36: 40.4 h
31	Rafael Vega	Colombia	1: 37: 27.4 h
32	Khoo Chong Beng	Malaysia	1:40: 16.8 h
33	Pat Farrelly	Canada	1: 41: 36.2 h
34	Yoshio Morikawa	Japan	1: 42: 20.6 h
35	Alex Oakley	Canada	1: 44: 08.8 h
36	Henry Klein	American Virgin Islands	1: 50: 50.4 h
DSQ	Domingo Colin	Mexico
DNF	Bernd Kannenberg	BR Germany

literature

• Ernst Huberty / Willy B. Wange, The Olympic Games Montreal Innsbruck 1976, Lingen-Verlag, Cologne 1976, p. 232

Video

• MARCHISTA MEXICANO GANA MEDALLA DE ORO , published on May 12, 2014 on youtube.com, accessed on December 15, 2017

Web links

• SportsReference 20km Walk , accessed December 15, 2017
• Montréal 1976 Official Report, Volume III, Results , pp. 60f, English / French (PDF, 23 MB), accessed on December 15, 2017

Individual evidence

1. ↑ IAAF Statistics Handbook, Berlin 2009 Page 566 (Engl.) ( Memento of 29 June 2011 at the Internet Archive ), accessed on 15 December 2017
2. ↑ Route map in the Official Report , p. 162 (PDF), accessed on December 15, 2017
3. ↑ Montréal 1976 Official Report, Volume III, Results , p. 23 (schedule) / p. 61 (result), English / French (PDF, 23 MB), accessed on December 15, 2017
4. ↑ SportsReference , accessed December 15, 2017