On the afternoon of August 5, another Dongguan athlete will appear in the Olympic arena: Wang Kaihua, trained by Dongguan Sports School and transported to the Chinese athletics team, will sprint for the country in the men's 20-kilometer race walk. The Asian champion and national champion just broke the national record with a time of 1 hour, 16 minutes and 54 seconds in March this year, and at 3:30 pm today, Wang Kaihua will go all out to impact the "triple crown" of Chinese athletes in this event.
According to the arrangement, a total of 57 runners signed up for the men's 20 km race walking competition at the Tokyo Olympic Games, including Wang Kaihua, No. 28, Cai Zelin, No. 25, and Zhang Jun, No. 31, representing the Chinese team. The competition will start at 15:30 Beijing time on the 5th and 16:30 local time at Sapporo Odori Park.
The men's 20 km race walk has been a gold medal event in Chinese athletics in recent years, after the 2012 London and 2016 Rio Olympic Games, Chen Ding and Wang Zhen won gold medals for the Chinese delegation consecutively, and the former's 1 hour 18 minutes and 46 seconds of winning the championship is still an Olympic record. The current world record is set by Japan's Yusuke Suzuki, with a time of 1 hour, 16 minutes and 36 seconds.
Wang Kaihua, a gansu boy born in 1994, initially began to exercise with the original intention of exercising, and showed his talent for race walking when he was in junior high school in Lanzhou. In 2008, under the leadership of Zhang Fuxin, the "gold medal coach" of the Chinese athletics team's race walking project, Wang Kaihua came to Dongguan Sports School and Guangdong Provincial Athletics Middle and Long Distance Running Training Base for further training. Just two years later, he became a blockbuster: at the 2010 Guangdong Provincial Games, Wang Kaihua won two gold medals in the 5,000-meter and 10,000-meter race walking events on behalf of Dongguan, and then as an outstanding potential player, he entered the Chinese athletics team that year and began to receive key training.
In 2013, Wang Kaihua won the National Championship Youth Championship, in 2016 he represented the Chinese team to win the World Championship of race walking, and in the same year, he went to the Rio Olympic Games with the national team as a substitute. In March 2017, Wang Kaihua finished the race in 1 hour, 17 minutes and 54 seconds at the National Race Walking Championship, successfully breaking the Olympic record held by Chen Ding (1 hour, 18 minutes and 46 seconds), and at the Tianjin National Games in September of that year, Wang Kaihua won the championship for Guangdong in 1 hour, 20 minutes and 52 seconds. At the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, Wang Kaihua represented the Chinese team and won the gold medal in 1 hour, 22 minutes and 04 seconds. Since 2019, Wang Kaihua has made steady progress, and is currently the national record holder of 1 hour, 16 minutes and 54 seconds, and the Olympic Games should be the first candidate for the championship.
Written by: Nandu reporter Han Chengliang