Athletics at the 2004 Summer Olympics – Men's 50 kilometres walk Athletics at the 2004 Summer Olympics – Men's 50 kilometres walk The men's 50 kilometres race walk at the 2004 Summer Olympics as part of the athletics program was held through the streets of Athens with the start and finish at the Athens Olympic Stadium on August 27. The race had started in the virtually empty Olympic Stadium with fifty-four walkers lining up the field. The Chinese trio of Han Yucheng, Yu Chaohong, and Alatan Gadasu hurtled away from the pack to take the front as they left the stadium. In the early laps, Han made a tactical move to
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.