2009 World Championships in Athletics – Men's 50 kilometres walk record, PB = Personal best, SB = Seasonal best, WL = World leading (in a given season) 2009 World Championships in Athletics – Men's 50 kilometres walk The men's 50 kilometre walk at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics took place on August 21, 2009 on the streets of Berlin, Germany. The event started and finished at the Brandenburg Gate. Prior to the competition, previous winners did not appear to be medal prospects: the defending world champion Nathan Deakes missed the competition due to injury, and the reigning Olympic champion Alex Schwazer had failed to finish his sole 50 km
Athletics at the 2016 Summer Olympics not the venue for the opening or closing ceremonies in Rio de Janeiro – that honour went to Brazil's foremost soccer venue, the Maracanã Stadium. On the first day, the first gold medal was won by Almaz Ayana of Ethiopia, who broke a long-standing world record in the women's 10,000 metres by almost fifteen seconds. The race as a whole was historically fast, setting four of the five fastest times ever for the distance and seeing eight national records broken. China's Wang Zhen was the first male winner of the 2016 Olympic athletics, topping the 20 kilometres race walk podium.