SAPPORO, Japan — Canada’s Evan Dunfee won a bronze medal in the last Olympic men’s 50-kilometre race walk Friday.
The 30-year-old from Richmond, B.C., reached the podium in a race of attrition amid the heat and humidity of Sapporo. The temperature at the 5:30 a.m. start was 25 celsius with over 70 per cent humidity and it got hotter.
Poland’s Dawid Tomala captured gold, Germany’s Jonathan Hilbert claimed silver, while Dunfee took the final podium spot with a late push on the final lap.
The International Olympic Committee will remove the 50-kilometre race walk from the Summer Games program for gender balance. There isn’t a women’s 50-kilometre race walk. Men and women both compete in the 20-kilometre.
Dunfee knew how to manage the heat over 25 laps of the two-kilometre course. He endured sweltering conditions at the 2019 world championship in Doha, Qatar, to win bronze.
Guillaume LeBlanc is Canada’s only other race walk medallist with a 20-kilometre silver in Barcelona in 1992.
[relatedlinks]
