Dunfee

SEPTEMBER 2023 UPDATE:

Evan Dunfee made history at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games when he won bronze in the 50km race walk for Canada’s first ever Olympic medal in the event.

He finished just off the podium in 4th in both the 20km and 35km race walk events at the 2023 World Championships, and finished 6th in the 35km event at the 2022 Worlds.

Evan Dunfee made history at the 2019 World Athletics Championships when he won bronze to become Canada’s first ever medallist in the 50-kilometre race walk at the global biennial event. Because of the high heat and humidity in Doha, Qatar, the race started just before midnight on his 29th birthday and he crossed the finish line around 4 a.m. He steadily cut through the field, moving up from 30th to 15th by the halfway mark and to fifth with 10 kilometres to go. After struggling in that last stretch in recent races, Dunfee was able to pick up his pace and make a final push for the podium, moving from fourth to third in the last kilometre. He entered Doha on a high, having set a new Canadian record in July in the 10,000-metre walk at the BC Athletics Championships, as part of his gruelling training ahead of the 2019 World Athletics Championships.

He had almost won a major international medal three years earlier. For a few hours at Rio 2016, it looked like Dunfee was an Olympic bronze medallist in the 50-kilometre race walk. After leading at the 35-kilometre mark, he had crossed the finish line in fourth place, but was upgraded to the podium with the disqualification of Japan’s Hirooki Arai, who had appeared to bump Dunfee in the closing kilometres. But after the Jury of Appeal reinstated Arai, Dunfee showed great sportsmanship in letting the issue drop and having the results stand. Dunfee’s time of 3:41:38 was a Canadian record and his fourth-place finish was Canada’s best-ever Olympic result in the event. Earlier in the Games he had posted a 10th-place finish in the 20-kilometre race walk.

With former training partners and teammates I?aki Gomez and Benjamin Thorne, Dunfee has helped demystify Canadian race walking, given some swagger and cachet – not to mention impressive results – to a discipline some regard as a curiosity.

In May 2016, Dunfee, Thorne, Gomez and Mathieu Bilodeau’s collective efforts had placed them second behind China in the IAAF World Race Walking Team Championships in Rome. Thorne was fifth in that race in 1:19.55, Gomez (1:20.12) was seventh, Dunfee (1:21:26) was 16th and Bilodeau (1:31.13) was 89th. That team result, and the group’s tongue-in-cheek chatter about seeking “world domination” raised their profile, as well as that of their sport, in Canada.

Dunfee and Gomez had already made a bit of a splash when they finished one-two in the 20-kilometre walk at the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto.

At the 2014 IAAF World Race Walking Cup, Dunfee, Gomez and Thorne finished 11th, 12th and 13th, respectively, in the 20-kilometre race walk, with Dunfee’s time of 1:20.13 smashing the existing Canadian record by some 45 seconds. Gomez and Thorne also broke the existing Canadian mark. The trio’s collective performance earned them a fourth-place finish in the team standings.

Dunfee finished eighth at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in the 20-kilometre race walk and 12th at the IAAF World Race Walking Team Championships in the 50-kilometre race. He then walked to two gold medals on home soil, winning the 20-kilometer race walk at the NACAC Championships in Toronto and the 10,000-metre race walk at the Canadian Track & Field Championships.

Dunfee started competitive race walking as a 10-year-old, switching over from running events when he achieved early success. Given his deep commitment to his sport, Dunfee was understandably concerned when news began to filter out that World Athletics planned to discontinue the 50-kilometre event, Dunfee’s specialty. The gruelling event got a reprieve from World Athletics president Sebastian Coe, who announced the 50-kilometre walk would remain on the program for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.