Can Italy’s former Olympic and world champion Massimo Stano complete the full set of major race walk titles in Birmingham?
Stano will face an all-star cast in the first ever staging of this discipline in any major championships including Sweden’s Perseus Karlström and Spain’s Miguel Ángel López, both of whom have won the one title that has eluded Stano so far.
European record - Not yet established
European lead - Alex Schwazer (ITA) 3:01:55
Championship record - New event
Munich 2022 medallists (35km race walk)
Miguel Ángel López (ESP) 2:26:49
Christopher Linke (GER) 2:29:30
Matteo Giupponi (ITA) 2:30:34
Five to watch
- Massimo Stano (ITA)
- Perseus Karlström (SWE)
- Miguel Angel Lopez (ESP)
- Aurélien Quinion (FRA)
- Christopher Linke (GER)
For all of his accolades, Stano has never won a medal of any description, let alone a title, at the European Athletics Championships. His best showing so far remains a fourth-place finish in the 20km in Berlin in 2018.
Less than a month after winning 35km gold at the 2022 World Athletics Championships, a fatigued Stano only finished eighth in the 20km in Munich in 2022 before an untimely foot injury deprived Stano of the chance of contributing to Italy’s record title haul at the 2024 European Athletics Championships in Rome.
And the highs and lows have continued since then. Stano smashed the world 35km race walk record at the European Race Walking Team Championships in Podebrady last May with a 2:20:43 clocking before a hamstring injury forced him to pull out of the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo where he was targeting his second world title.
"I haven't competed in ten months; I had to reset everything, start from scratch," said Stano on the eve of the World Athletics Race Walking Team Championships in Brasilia in mid-April where he was the top European finisher in fifth and led Italy to team silver; a promising comeback as he builds towards Birmingham.
Stano was pursued by in-form Frenchman Aurélien Quinion who finished sixth in Brasilia and is trending towards a place on a major championships podium for the first time. He finished fourth and fifth respectively in the 20km and 35km at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.
The winner of the 35km in Munich 2022 was Spain’s Miguel Ángel López who has received a wildcard for Birmingham by virtue of winning that title. López is a proven championship performer but the 38-year-old has never contested this distance nor does he have much in the way of quantifiable form having only raced three times this year and only once since early March.
If López isn’t able to rekindle his very best form, the Spanish team will still have other medal prospects in this event. Their quartet also includes Daniel Chamosa who finished sixth in the 35km at the 2025 World Athletics Championships and Manuel Bermúdez who was fourth behind López in Munich 2022.
The winner of the 20km race walk title in Rome was Sweden’s Perseus Karlström who will step up in distance to contest the longer of the two race walking disciplines in Birmingham.
Like Stano, Karlström has had his trials and tribulations in recent years. After winning an emotional gold medal in Rome, an untimely bout of coronavirus left him weakened for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris where he could only finish 21st and yet more illness forced the 36-year-old to withdraw from the World Athletics Race Walking Team Championships.
But Karlström’s year did begin on a better note with a solo 3:04:50 clocking in the United States on his debut at the distance.
The European record target time of 3:00:00 has remained largely untouched in the admittedly brief history of the discipline. The fastest European among those competing in Birmingham is Hungary’s Bence Venyercsán who clocked 3:03:45 for victory in the famous Dudince race walking event in Slovakia ahead of Germans Karl Junghannss (3:04:33) and Christopher Linke (3:05:44).
