[1] The biennial World Athletics Championships also features both 20 and 50 kilometer events, the 50 km walk for women being contested until 2019.

The sport emerged from a British culture of long-distance competitive walking known as pedestrianism, which began to develop the ruleset that is the basis of the modern discipline around the mid-19th century.

Since the mid-20th century onwards, Russian and Chinese athletes have been among the most successful on the global stage, with Europe and parts of Latin America producing most of the remaining top-level walkers.

However, it has been particularly affected by doping, with many Russian world and Olympic champions testing positive for banned performance-enhancing drugs.

Athletes regularly lose contact for a few milliseconds per stride, which can be caught on film, but such a short flight phase is said to be undetectable to the human eye.

Strides are short and quick, with pushoff coming forward from the ball of the foot, again to minimize the risk of losing contact with the ground.

Race walking developed as one of the original track and field events of the first meeting of the English Amateur Athletics Association in 1880.

Pedestrianism had developed, like footraces and horse racing, as a popular working class British and American pastime, and a venue for wagering.

Walkers organised the first English amateur walking championship in 1866, which was won by John Chambers, and judged by the "fair heel and toe" rule.

The series of televised events takes place in several countries each year including Mexico, Spain, Russia and China.

Requiring to have one foot in contact with the ground at all times reduces the impacts on ankles, knees, and hips that lead to running injuries.

[4] In 1992, noted sportscaster and longtime Olympic commentator Bob Costas compared it to "a contest to see who can whisper the loudest".

[17] In the 2021 film Queenpins, actress Kristen Bell plays a 3-time gold medal Olympic racewalker and extreme couponer.

In a local Seattle sketch comedy series Almost Live!, Bill Nye played "Speed Walker": a superhero who fights crime while adhering to the standards of competitive speed-walking.