1980 Summer Olympics / Athletics - 50 km walk (men)

sport	athletics
discipline	50 km walk
gender	Men
Attendees	29 athletes from 14 countries
Competition location	Luschniki Olympic Stadium (start and finish)
Competition phase	July 30, 1980
Medalist Hartwig Gauder ( GDR )   Jorge Llopart ( ESP )   Yevgeny Ivchenko ( URS )

The men's 50 km walk at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow was held on July 30, 1980. The start and finish was the Luzhniki Olympic Stadium . 29 athletes took part, 15 of whom made it to the finish. The discipline was not held in Montreal in 1976 and has now returned to the Olympic program.

Olympic champion was Hartwig Gauder from the GDR. He won ahead of the Spaniards Jorge Llopart and Yevgeny Ivchenko from the Soviet Union.

In addition to the Olympic champion, Uwe Dünkel and Dietmar Meisch also competed for the GDR . Both were disqualified.
Walkers from Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein did not take part. Athletes from the Federal Republic of Germany were also not there because of the Olympic boycott.

Existing records

World record	3: 41.20 h	Raúl González ( Mexico )	Poděbrady , Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic )	June 11, 1978
Olympic record	3: 56: 11.6 h	Bernd Kannenberg ( Federal Republic of Germany )	50 km walk from Munich , Federal Republic of Germany	3rd September 1972

Race course

Date: July 30, 1980, 5:00 p.m. local time ( UTC + 3 )

Like over 20 kilometers , the Mexican walkers were among the top favorites on the 50 km distance . Raúl González had improved Bernd Kannenberg 's world best in 1978 twice. In his last best time, González was more than ten minutes faster than Kannenberg in 1972. Daniel Bautista also had to be taken seriously, although he preferred the 20 km distance more. His compatriot Martín Bermúdez was not rated as highly. But there were other contenders for the top places, including the Spanish European champion from 1978 , Jorge Llopart, the always highly valued Soviet walkers and Hartwig Gauder from the GDR, who in the last two years more and more from the shorter 20 kilometers to the longer walking distance was changed.

González and Gauder had set themselves apart from the rest of the field for the first 20 kilometers of the competition. Gauder then left behind him from kilometer 30 to the Mexican. González gave up soon after, exhausted. Hartwig Gauder reached the goal with over two minutes ahead of Jorge Llopart. These two won gold and silver. Another five minutes behind Llopart, the Soviet walker Yevgeny Ivchenko crossed the finish line and won the bronze medal. The next places went to the Swede Bengt Simonsen, Vyacheslav Fursow, USSR and the Spaniard José Marín. Hartwig Gauder improved Bernd Kannenberg's Olympic record by almost seven minutes in his Olympic victory .

Jorge Llopart was the first Spanish medalist in Olympic walking competitions .
At the age of 42, Yevgeny Ivchenko was the oldest participant in the field and one of the oldest medal winners in Olympic athletics.

Bottom line

Spaniard Jorge Llopart, the winner of the silver medal, arrives at the finish line

space	Surname	nation	time	annotation
1	Hartwig Gauder	GDR	3:49:24 h	OR
2.	Jorge Llopart	Spain	3:51:25 h
3	Yevgeny Ivchenko	Soviet Union	3: 56.32 h
4th	Bengt Simonsen	Sweden	3:57:08 h
5	Vyacheslav Fursov	Soviet Union	3:58:32 h
6th	José Marín	Spain	4:03:08 h
7th	Stanislaw Rola	Poland	4:07:07 h
8th	Willi Sawall	Australia	4:08:25 h
9	László Sátor	Hungary	4:10:53 h
10	Pavol Blažek	Czechoslovakia	4:16:26 h
11	Ian Richards	Great Britain	4:22:57 h
12	Aristidis Karageorgos	Greece	4:24:36 h
13	Juraj Benčík	Czechoslovakia	4:27:39 h
14th	Enrique Peña	Colombia	4:29:27 h
15th	Ernesto Alfaro	Colombia	4:46:28 h
DNF	Daniel Bautista	Mexico
	Martín Bermúdez	Mexico
	Bohdan Bułakowski	Poland
	Raúl González	Mexico
	Bo Gustafsson	Sweden
	Gérard Lelièvre	France
	Reima saloons	Finland
	David Smith	Australia
DSQ	Uwe Dünkel	GDR
	Borys Yakovlev	Soviet Union
	Dietmar Meisch	GDR
	Jaromír Vaňous	Czechoslovakia

Video

• Juegos Olímpicos Moscú 1980, 50km marcha , published on April 23, 2013 on youtube.com, accessed on December 30, 2017

Web links

• SportsReference 50km Walk , accessed December 30, 2017
• Moscow 1980 Official Report, Volume III, Results , p. 50f, English / French (PDF, 28 MB), accessed on December 30, 2017

Individual evidence

1. ↑ IAAF Statistics Handbook, Berlin 2009 Page 566 (Engl.) ( Memento of 29 June 2011 at the Internet Archive ), accessed on 30 December 2017
2. ↑ Moscow 1980 Official Report, Volume III, Results , p. 17 (schedule) / p. 51 (result), English / French (PDF, 28 MB), accessed on December 30, 2017
3. ↑ SportsReference , accessed December 30, 2017