Aku Partanen, who started the men’s 20 km walk with great expectations, finished in 32nd place.
SpongeBob Forsberg,
Joel Holm
The Finnish hope of walking Aku Partanen the race at the Paris 20 km was disappointing. The placings in the top six at the last EC and WC raised expectations even for a medal fight.
The Finn closed the first kilometers near the top, but he started to get stronger at the eight kilometer mark and was finally four minutes away from the winner. Partanen finished in 32nd place.
– It wasn’t easy today. It was difficult to get into a rhythm from the beginning. You had to push a little to get there. It felt like the momentum froze quite early on. 20 kilometers was quite a long distance today, Partanen said at the finish line.
Failure in the most important competition of his career would piss off the 32-year-old Partas.
– Many races in this four-year period have gone well, and I guess there will be a bad race at some point. It’s just a shame that it came to the main race now. I would have liked more.
During the race, Partanen tried to hope that the work would get easier and warm his feet, but he didn’t succeed.
– Today was really difficult. Usually I can always say something about what caused it, but now I can’t really say why nothing happened at all.
Partanen had a cold after the Kaleva Games, but on the other hand, he felt strong the last 1.5 weeks before the Olympics. The finishing exercises in Paris went well.
– It’s hard to say whether the illness had an effect, I don’t know. This season has not been optimal in terms of training, but yes, I had hopes for better today than that result shows. In fact, there was no area that could have been satisfied today.
29 years old from Ecuador Brian Daniel Pintado ran away in the last kilometer to the Olympic victory. The deadline was 1.15.24. The second one was from Brazil Caio Bonfim, who was 14 seconds behind the winner. of Spain Alvaro Martin was third (+16). Reigning Olympic champion Italy Massimo Stano sprained his ankle and fell off the pace of the top three in the last couple of kilometers.