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The beginning of February 2025 saw seven world records take place on indoor tracks and the road. This past weekend the fastest all-time North American 20km racewalk by Canada’s Evan Dunfee happened in Adelaide, AUS. He clocked a 1:17:39 performance. Now, the second-fastest 1500-metre performance in history has just dropped. The Copernicus Cup in Torun, Italy on Sunday is where Ethiopian Gudaf Tsegay was running the metric mile.

The two-time world champion won the race in a world-leading time of 3:53.92, the second-fastest indoor performance in history. She narrowly missed her own world record.

Tsegay improved the meet record of 3:54.77 from 2022, which she set. She finished just 0.83 seconds short of her world indoor record (3:53.09) set in Liévin in 2021. Following the race, Tsegay said that she had been recovering from flu. Fellow Ethiopian world U20 champion Birke Haylom, finished second in 3:59.92, while Worknesh Mesele completed an Ethiopian sweep with a season’s best of 4:02.19.

Results

The 28-year-old won bronze during the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games in the 5000m event. She clocked a 14:38.37 performance over the 12.5-lap event. She finished sixth in the 10,000m event at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. In Eugene in 2022 and Budapest in 2023, she earned world championship gold in the 5000m and 10,000m, respectively.

Tsegay also earned silver and bronze in the 1500m events in Eugene and the 2019 Doha World Athletics Championships.

Her personal best in the 1500m outdoors is 3:50.30. Her 5000m best continues to be listed as the world record at 14:00.21. She set that record at the 2023 Prefontaine Classic in the Diamond League.

Evan Dunfee

Greater Vancouver’s Evan Dunfee transformed himself from a 50km specialist to a world-class 20km racewalker. The change was out of necessity as the International Olympic Committee removed the longer event from the Olympic program.

On social media, Dunfee wrote, “Dream day. For nearly 20 years I’ve been looking at Julio Martinez’s 1:17:46 North American Record with dreams of taking it down one day. Today was that day. Perfect course, ideal weather, head in the right space. 1:17:39. Thank you Australia.”

Dunfee had captured bronze during the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games. The now 34-year-old took fourth in the Rio Olympic Games back in 2016. He was in position for bronze but was bumped in the final km, which took him off of his rhythm. In the 2019 Doha World Athletics Championships, Dunfee took bronze in the 50km distance. At the time, 20km was a distance he raced, but typically trained for the longer event believing that is where his strength lay.

He had won gold at the Panam and Commonwealth Games level.

Dunfee now has five Canadian or North American racewalk records which include the distances 5000m NR, 10,000m NR on the track and 20km AR, 35km AR and 50km NR. While the 5000m is a Canadian record it is officially the fastest known time in North America — records for that event for the “North American,” area are not kept as “records,” per se.

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