The best Italian performance in racewalk 3000 meters turns 35: 10’47”.11 the extraordinary result of Giovanni De Benedictis is still unbeaten. A stratospheric time that on May 19, 1990 the then standard-bearer of the Carabinieri Sports Center, now in well-deserved retirement also from active service in the italian police force, signed on the track of S. Giovanni Valdarno (ITA). Here for athletics fans a piece of history of the Italian racewalking still present in video on YouTube:
Let us remember that until 2018 this result was also the world’s best performance (for 28 years), before being surpassed by the British Tom Bosworth, who on 21 July 2018 on the London track stopped the clock at 10’43”.84. De Benedictis is currently in sixth place in the all-time world rankings for this race distance.
This remains only one of the unforgettable and numerous successes of Giovanni De Benedictis, the pride of the italian nation and of the Carabinieri, who just last January was also awarded the title of “Cavaliere della Repubblica” (Knight of Republic), an honour from the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
