It was August 11, 2012 and the writer was there on the Mall in London judging one of the craziest races in the world history of race walking.

Less than two hours later the women's 20km race walk of the Games of the XXX Olympiad would end with victory on the beautiful course in front of Buckingham Palace with the victory of Elena Lashmanova (1:25:02 - WR), second place in Olga Kaniskina (1:25:09), third place to Qieyang Shenjie (1:25:16).

Followed by Liu Hong (1:26:00), Anisya Kirdyapkina (1:26:26), Liu Xiuzhi (1:27:10) and Elisa Rigaudo (1:27:36).

The next day there would be the awards ceremony at the Olympic stadium in London with a huge crowd.

A few years passed and doping events eliminated first Anisya Kirdyapkina, then Olga Kaniskina and recently also Elena Lashmanova from the finishing order.

Last week in the splendid setting of the stadium in which the Asian Games were held, on the Qiantang River Belt in Hangzhou (CHN), after well over 11 years, the final protocol award ceremony finally took place with the three Chinese athletes on the podium in memory of that memorable race.

What we present to you is the original video.

The writer was personally moved to see the three athletes met several times in their careers; the emotion was even greater when I saw Qieyang Shenjie unable to hold back her tears.

( 中文版 )

那是 2012 年 8 月 11 日，作者在倫敦購物中心評判世界步行史上最瘋狂的比賽之一。