Remember when your momma always told you cheaters never win (well, unless she was a cheater too)? That philosophy held true in the Superbowl this year. But I’ve found one Olympic sport in which this adage falls apart. It’s quite possibly the dumbest competitive sport ever, and I watched it last night in the Olympics. It’s race walking. Just from a logical point of view, it makes no sense to make walking into a race.  What’s next, bunting for distance?  Anyway, at first glance, it looks like you are watching a marathon, but then you notice that the “runners” look strange. They appear to be somewhere between walking and running, kind of like jogging, but without the bouncing. Clearly they are not walking, but they are also not running very hard, and yet they are racing each other. There are only 2 rules in race walking. Rule #1: You must keep 1 foot in contact with the ground at all times. When watching a race walking competition, it won’t take you long to notice that they’ve basically thrown this rule out the window. NOBODY follows this rule. They showed all the runners feet in slow motion, and every one of them were clearly airborne for every step they take. Here’s a picture of one of the top race walkers in the world in action. Notice both feet are clearly in the air. The commentators even admitted freely that if a race walker actually kept in contact with the ground at all times (like the rules state), they would not have a chance at being competitive and would come in last place. Nice sport, huh?

But what’s funny is that they have judges all over the course watching for walkers that are breaking this rule. Duh… just close your eyes and point, and you’ve got ‘em. Supposedly, IF they see somebody leaving the ground, they are to flash a yellow paddle at them and record their #. That is a warning for the runner to slow down, because they are going to fast… in the race (I know… I know, hence why I called it the dumbest sport ever). In an attempt to try to legitimize the sport, they modified the official rule to say “no visible (to the human eye) loss of contact”. So they do admit that everybody leaves the ground, but as long as it doesn’t LOOK LIKE they are leaving ground, it’s legal! If the same judge catches them again, they get a red card from that judge. If a walker gets red cards from 3 different judges, he will be disqualified from the race. So it would be kind of like driving the Indy 500 around downtown Indy, while trying to avoid getting multiple tickets from the same 3 cops along the way. It’s ok to get 2 tickets from the same cop, or even 20 tickets from 20 different cops. The “walkers” obviously know this and use it to their advantage. One of their favorite strategies is to walk in a dense pack so that the judges cannot see them cheating (more than usual)… again much like driving on the highway in a pack of cars all doing 80. So you’ll see packs of “walkers” just flying down the road, but if a single runner tries to catch up to them, he’s going to get carded because he’s cheating right out in the open for everybody to see.

Basically, this sport is the competitive version of Red Light/Green Light. Remember that game you played as a kid? You have the “stop light” stand up front with his back to the group and says “Green Light!”, which means the group of kids can move towards the stop light. But at any time, the stop light can say “RED LIGHT!” and spin around and if he catches anybody moving, he sends them back to the start. Except at least the kids here follow the rules of stopping when the “judge” turns around. In race walking, this would be akin to the kids keep moving slowly toward the “stop light” even on a red light, hoping that the “stop light” will not notice, and IF noticed, just that he won’t be noticed too many times, or that others cheaters will be noticed before them.

In the men’s Olympic 20-K in 2004, the winner from Mexico crossed the finish line to cheers and called the President of Mexico on the phone to get congratulated, only later to find out that he had been disqualified but didn’t know it. And in the women’s 20-K, the top 3 walkers were all disqualified, one just before approaching the finish line. RED LIGHT!!!!

This year, we only had 1 American in the 51 man field, and he finished 43rd, although 2 of the guys behind here were disqualified for cheating, so he got bumped up from 45th to 43rd. I guess we are not quite as good at cheating as the rest of the world quite yet, but I’m sure we’ll get there. Just for a little perspective, in the 20-K (12.4 miles), the winner averaged 6:20 per mile. Yeah, he’s walking all right.