THE MAN WHO CROSSED the line nearly 3:00 in front, Nick Christie, tells you that he’s “99% for Tokyo.” But the 34-year-old U.S. Airman has been around the racewalking world long enough not to be 100% sure of team inclusions.
Even with his resounding 1:24:56.3 win in the 20K — in this case 50 laps around the Hayward Field track — he has no full guarantee.
Christie’s PRs are several minutes short of the WC auto-Q standards for both the 20 and the 35K events. His best chance looks to be in the longer race where he held 54th position on WA’s Road To Tokyo list. The target field size is 50.
His game plan is to walk another strong 20K in the NACAC Championships (Freeport, Bahamas, August 16) to solidify his hopes of walking his way to the Worlds for either the 20 or the 35, or both.
Christie, a California guy who’d once been a decathlete, went on to become an NAIA walk champion and recordbreaker at Missouri Baptist. He joined up with the Air Force and its World Class Athlete Program earlier this year to bolster all his opportunities.
Yes, the Air Force for an athlete whose specialty event requires careful attention to the elimination of “flight phase.”
This was Christie’s seventh straight national crown in the 20 and he trails only Hall of Famers Ron Laird and Henry Laskau, and his former coach Tim Seaman, on the all-time list of national walk titlists.
“I was just cruising,” said Christie, who reeled off lap after lap at 1:40ish pace. ‘’Felt good the whole way. And good to see some young guys battling it out behind me, and three of them under 1:29. That hasn’t happened for a while.”
Emmanuel “Natos” Corvera, the last man to beat Christie in a national 20 — back in ’17 on a road course — held on for 2nd in 1:27:59.2. His effort outdueled Jordan Crawford (1:28:02.6) and Jason Cherng (1:28:16.0.)
Walking’s future on the world stage remains in a muddle. While Tokyo will include a 20K and a 35K, racing distances at the ’27 Worlds in Beijing will switch to the 21.1K and the 42.2K (aka the half- and full-marathons).
But the already announced LA28 Olympic slate now lists just the half-marathon. That gimmicky marathon relay walk they did at Paris 2024? That seems to have vanished, too — its single-Games history much shorter than the extinct 50K, a…
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