Japan's Daisuke Matsunaga wins the 10,000m race walk at the IAAF World Junior Championships, Oregon 2014 (© Getty Images)
Daisuke Matsunaga confirmed his pre-race favourite status in impressive fashion by taking the 10,000m race walk in a championship record of 39:27.19 at Hayward Field.
The Japanese race walker made a significant improvement on the previous mark of 39:35.01, set by Russia’s Stanislav Yemelyanov in 2008 and came close to his Asian junior record of 39:18.71.
Second in the junior race at the 2014 IAAF World Race Walking Cup in May, Matsunaga took the lead straight from the gun and already enjoyed a 55m lead by the first kilometre, covered in 3:54.07.
He ticked off sub-four-minute kilometres throughout the 25 laps and went on to win by almost 100 metres.
The chase group of 13 shrank to nine after the halfway mark and then to five shortly afterwards.
Spain’s Diego Garcia made his move with four kilometres remaining, although the 100-metre gap between him and Matsunaga remained the same, and left the battle for the bronze medal to be be fought between Peru’s Paolo Yurivilca, Ecuador’s Brian Pintado and Russia’s Nikolay Markov.
Pintado and Yurivilca broke away from Markov shortly after eight kilometres. Pintado accelerated with two laps remaining and crossed the third, only to learn he had been disqualified.
Garcia finished second in a Spanish junior record of 39:51.59 while Yurivilca also walked a national junior standard of 40:02.07 to claim Peru’s second medal in the history of the World Junior Championships, the first one since Alfredo Deza’s high jump gold in 1998.
Matsunaga became just the the fourth Japanese athlete to win a world junior title, and two of these champions have come in race walking.
Javier Clavelo Robinson for the IAAF
