Race walking at the Olympics the first two editions, the women's event was extended to match the men's 20 km distance from the 2000 Sydney Olympics onwards. Women have never commonly competed internationally over 50 km, thus it has never been proposed as an Olympic event – as of 2012 it remains the only event on the Olympic athletics programme in which men compete, but women do not have an equivalent. The 50 km is also the longest distance race for an Olympic athletics event. The Olympic records in racewalking were all broken at the 2012 London Olympics. In the 20 km walk Chen Ding
2015 World Championships in Athletics – Women's 20 kilometres walk is a road course, the official times are only accurate to one second so both athlete's times round to the same time. Olyanovska continued to hold on, finishing just 28 seconds back for bronze. The rest of the field finished more than 1:15 behind her. It was the first gold medal for the home team at these championships. Prior to the competition, the records were as follows: The race was started at 08:30. 2015 World Championships in Athletics – Women's 20 kilometres walk The women's 20 kilometres walk at the 2015 World Championships in Athletics was held at the Beijing