What is six-day racewalking?

Six-day racewalking is all about testing an athlete’s endurance. Finding the right balance between speed, time spent moving forward, sleep, nutrition, and time out for body maintenance (dealing with blisters and other issues caused by pushing the body to the limits for 144 hours).

Athletes that compete in six-day races learn more about themselves in a week than most people learn in a lifetime!

Why six days?

Six-day racewalking started in the late 18th century when sporting activities on a Sunday were frowned upon, or even banned in many countries. Races used to start shortly after midnight Sunday/Monday and finish before midnight the following Saturday night. They were usually between 142 hours and a fraction under 144 hours in duration.

They were an extremely popular spectator activity, especially in the United Kingdom and United Stated of America, with races normally being held on short indoor tracks in venues such as Madison Square Garden in New York and the Royal Agricultural Hall in London. Thousands of spectators would pay to watch and gambling on the outcome, bribery of both officials and athletes, as well as other underhand tactics was commonplace.

Competitors also often took stimulants to help them stay wake and to dull the pain that would be banned in the modern era. And for this reason, this website focus’ solely on six-day racewalking in the modern era – 1980 through to today.

6dayracewalking.com

On this website, you will find a list of all six-day races since 1980 that are known to have had walkers participating. Included in the list are longer races, in which walkers competed, where a six day split is recorded. Unfortunately, we can only list races where there are published results, so if you are aware of any races meeting this criteria that are not listed, please let us know.

For the main part, and until the first 6 Jours de France in 2009, these were running races without racewalking judges ensuring that the athletes competing as walkers were in fact walking every step. It wasn’t until the first 6 Jours de France in Antibes in June 2009 that the first known six-day walking race of the modern era was held. The list of races plus the results and rankings pages note whether or not the race was judged, not judged, or we don’t know (unknown).

We have also listed all athletes who are known to have walked in a six-day race, and all their results.

And using those results we have created, and continue to maintain, overall rankings as well as separate rankings for men and women, overall and national records as well as age group records and also allcomers records (the greatest distance walked by a man and a women in each country known to have hosted a six-day race in which walkers competed).

Our intention is to provide a resource for walkers to view historical results and hopefully provide some inspiration.

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