Q&A: Canadian race walker Evan Dunfee on the long road to Tokyo 2020

Evan Dunfee of Canada douses himself with water during the men's 50-km race walk at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Evan Dunfee came excruciatingly close to winning a bronze medal at the 2016 Olympics in Rio. And he had to wait a year longer than expected for another shot at the podium due to the Tokyo Olympics getting postponed to 2021.

But for Dunfee, that dream deferred was a dream realized as it allowed him to get healthy, mentally and physically. Throughout the pandemic, Dunfee put his time to use training on the streets of his hometown, Richmond, B.C., doing his daily 25- to 30-km routine.

The 50-km race walking specialist made history at the 2019 World Athletics Championships when he won bronze to become Canada’s first ever medallist in the 50-km race walk at the global biennial event. And now, finally, he has reached Tokyo with two objectives in mind — a medal and making walking as exercise more prominent in Canada.

Dunfee’s 50-km race walk event begins at 4:30 p.m. EDT Thursday afternoon (Friday morning in Tokyo). I caught up with him before the Games to learn more about his dual goals, how they aren’t mutually exclusive but complimentary, and why he’s the perfect person to do both.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

SPORTSNET: Congrats on going to the Olympics ... given everything that you’ve had to do as an athlete to get yourself in this position. What does that accomplishment mean to you now?

Evan Dunfee: It’s crazy to think that I qualified for the Olympics in April 2019. It just feels like worlds away from where we are today.

It is crazy to think about the feelings I had on that day, where I thought I’d be a year from then and preparing and all that stuff, and then just everything that changed before our eyes and where we are now. It’s so strange.

It’s a huge honour to be representing Canada at my second Olympics and to be in a position where I feel like I’m the fittest I’ve ever been, the happiest I’ve ever been, the healthiest I’ve ever been. It’s a great combination to go in with having your physical and your mental health, coordinated in that manner.

How are you a different athlete in 2021 going to the Olympics than you would have been if they were on schedule in 2020?

I certainly felt this was a blessing in disguise for me with the delay. In 2020 it was a scramble to try to get myself healthy. In March I was just thinking, “Man, how do I just hold my body together to get to August?” It was stressful.

I was just dealing with daily pain. And then with the delay, it was like, “I can start training, I can get healthy, I can fix these hamstrings and get them back to full strength,” and then the past 12, 13, 14 months have just been uninterrupted training.

I’ve hit every single training personal best this year. I’ve had a couple of races ... and the body is just in such a different place than it was in March 2020.

Everything happens in cycles — laddering up, every four years the Olympics. And a lot of your funding and sponsorship opportunities also ebb and flow that way, and sponsors really rally around the Olympics. When there was that pause, I wondered what it would mean for amateur athletes who were counting on some support and counting on having a big Games to continue to have that support. How much of a consideration was that for you?

We were really lucky with the Olympic Committee stepping up and helping with the additional support and filling some of those gaps. I didn't rely too heavily on prize money and those sort of earnings year to year because I was always like, “You never know what’s going to happen.” And if I win any prize money, it’s kind of a bonus. I need to make sure that I have enough in place that I’m going to be okay regardless of how the season goes.

But some athletes, the only way they can get by is relying on some of that prize money and having to step up and find support and find themselves additional funding. Of course, the COC saved a lot of money by not having to send all these teams everywhere. So that funding moved around to keep athletes supported, which was really huge.

CAN Fund obviously is an invaluable resource to Canadian athlete. Just that support that they provide is really unmatched for athletes who don’t have these big partnerships. And I’ve been lucky enough to receive CAN Fund on numerous occasions in this last Olympic cycle. And then a month and a half ago, I get a phone call from these people saying they’re with Kraft Dinner, [and] they want to support me.

And so much of my career has been me trying to convince people that I’m valuable and that race walking is valuable. And then all of a sudden out of the blue, these people called me up and said, “Hey, Evan, we think you’re valuable.” This must be a dream. Someone’s pulling a prank on me. But sure enough, no, they want to get on board.

How can that help make race walking a bit more seen during the Olympics?

And that’s been amazing for me just to have someone supporting me that basically gives me a megaphone to shout from the rooftops that race walking or walking — just getting out there and being active is a great first step to exercise. And if that’s all you do — if all you can do is go out and go for walks and you're being active, you’re being healthy. And having this partnership just allows me to just to shout that a little louder, to have that voice, to carry a little further.

And that’s one of the really big things I want to achieve out of being an athlete, is using my platform to promote walking as a perfectly valid form of exercise. And so this helps do that.

You use your platform to talk about the fact that race walking isn’t as supported, and it will be less supported by the IOC moving forward. What do you make of the lack of support at that level? Why do you think that’s the case, and what are the trickle-down effects of it not being supported maybe the way it should be?

I think fundamentally it’s always going to be a fringe event at the Olympics. It’s not like it was in the in the 1800s when they were selling out Madison Square Garden to watch people walk around a 100-metre dirt track for six days. The world has moved on since then. And I'm the first to say that it’s never going to be the marquee event.

But that said, I do think that our value is quite tremendous in being, on the one hand, at the Olympics we’re a free event that required zero infrastructure. You just need a kilometre of road and then anyone can come with their families and take part and watch and experience the magic that is the athletes at the Olympic Games. [You can] get three feet away from them and just see that ability to endure up close and personal. I think there’s tremendous value there.

And then back home, who better to be promoting physical activity and low-barrier access to physical activity than race walkers? We can easily go out and say that, “Yeah, walking is a tremendous way to get fit.”

I think that has enormous utility and value. I do think we’ve been criminally undervalued in terms of what we have to offer. And then the only other point I’d add to that is our training — my training — is out on the streets. I walk the streets of Richmond, and I get to interact with people at that level. I get to see my city from that unique kind of lens. It gives you a really awesome perspective of how a city works.

And then people get to see me and interact with me. And that’s what’s been so amazing these last couple of months — training at home, having countless people every day honking their horns, cheering support, “Good luck in Tokyo!” and all that sort of stuff. A lot of athletes don’t get that because they’re in a warehouse training, they’re in a school training, they’re in a gym training. They don’t get that same exposure to the people in their community.

It is a shame that the IOC doesn’t see things the same way. But I’ll keep shouting from my soapbox about its value to anyone who will listen and try to convince more people.

Ultimately, you’re walking at a pace over 10 kilometres faster than I can run 10 kilometres. Do people understand or underestimate the athletic feat that you’re undertaking?

I think there’s certainly an issue around [the fact that] it looks funny. So, therefore, it must be easy, and it’s a really hard trope to kind of get around. I found the most effective way of doing that is to acknowledge it looks funny. I always sort of try to explain any sport to an alien would look funny. And you’ll realize quickly how weird all of our sports are. But I think what’s what the most effective tool always is, is to get those people that think that way to get out and actually try it. And they quickly learn that this is quite challenging.

And that’s the other great aspect of the Kraft Dinner deal, is that they’re encouraging people. They’re challenging people to go out and walk, whether it be 100 meters, whether it be a kilometre — you know, whatever you want to do, go try it. And what’s cool is that they can take their selfie, use #KDracewalkers, and I’ll see that. And it’s a good way for people back home to support me. Even though my friends and family can’t be in Tokyo cheering on the sidelines, I can see all the support I have back home and the impact that I’m having by introducing more people to see the challenges, the effort, that race walking takes. I think that’s really big.

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