If we had to tell a sad race certainly the 35km of the Italian Championship that will take place on Sunday morning in Milazzo, it would be one of them.

Certainly not for the efforts of the organisers, the Duilia Amateur Sports Association of Barcelona, who have put their hearts into this organisation, but for the number which is absolutely not suited to an Italian Championship and well below in numerical terms the homologous one that last year took place in Pescara.

But even in the storm of Ostia 2021 scourged by the southwesterly wind, the qualitative and quantitative numbers had been more interesting, and then we competed on the 50km.

Reluctantly we have to say that we then think that when the IOC imposed on World Athletics to change the 50km it was not entirely wrong, if now with a race that is reduced to 2 hours and 40 minutes, or so there, for men and almost 3 hours for women was right since the already low participation of the past in the 50km remains the same in the 35km or even decreases.

When you join a club, remember to pay the fees. For athletes, these fees will be translated into one word: participation.

Without "participation" sooner or later race walking will disappear and this time not over a specific distance, but completely.
Is this what we want?

Overview of most important events

In the men's 35km last year Matteo Giupponi won in 2:33:45, but it was a real battle for the other two places of honour that saw Orsoni in front on Antonelli for 4 seconds. However, 10 athletes started, and then with disqualification and abandonments they ended in 7.

This year 5 Italians are entered to which is added a Chinese who is training in Saluzzo.

Luckily the accreditation performances of Michele Antonelli, Riccardo Orsoni and Cui Lihong are quite similar, so we hope that at least from the point of view of the battle it will give us some reason to be happy.

In the women's 35 we will instead have the presence of a fairly bombastic athlete: Li Maocuo (CHN) silver in Doha in the women's 50km and in Muscat in the World Team Championship. Her personal best on the distance is 2:44:28.

Unfortunately, the three top Italian athletes have much lower personal bests: Federica Curiazzi (2:52:06), Nicole Colombi (2:54:12) and Lidia Barcella (2:51:50), so we think that the athlete coached by Sandro Damilano decide to make a training together with the Italians or we will watch a solo race for victory. On the other hand, the race for the title between the three Italians will be interesting.

In the men's 20km, on the other hand, the number of members is almost identical to that of last season: 44 athletes, but among these 24 are masters, 7 are foreigners and 13 are seniors/U23s.

The most interesting name of the national walk is that of Andrea Cosi capable of 1:21:59 in La Coruna last year and frankly he is also the only Italian participant of high interest.

Of interest are foreign athletes from Spain: Marc Tur (1:21:36) and fourth in the Olympic Games in Sapporo and Alvaro Lopez Nunez (1:23:31)

Of great interest are the five athletes from China: Wang Kaihua (1:16:54) second world performance "all time" if we exclude the irregular 1:16:43 by Sergey Morozov; Zhang Jun (1:17:39); Liu Wenchao (1:19:33) and athletes usually dedicated to the 35km Zhaxi Yangben (1:22:45) and He Xiahanghong (1:25:29 of 2019)

Also in this case the victory will probably be a Chinese affair, but we hope that Andrea Cosi will thus find the opportunity in this race for a performance around 1_20:30.

In the 20km women the interest is aimed at Alexandrina Mihai and Vittoria Di Dato.