Race walking champ at Long Island high school aims to make Olympic sport more popular
Race walking is an Olympic sport that made its debut more than 100 years ago, but it still doesn't get a lot of attention. Long Island high school athlete Gianna Mauri is hoping to change that.
Walking a mile in Mauri's shoes may be the fastest mile you'll ever walk. The Sachem High School East senior is a dominant race walker who can walk a mile faster than most people can run it.
"I can run it and feel out of breath, but be able to race walk in a race at that pace," she said. "Sometimes I'm like, 'I race walk at this pace?!'"
Mauri won two national titles in the girls' one-mile race walk just three days apart at the New Balance Nationals in Boston and the Nike Indoor Nationals in New York City.
"I feel like I made a milestone in my life. I will always look back at this moment, even when I'm struggling, and think I was able to accomplish something that I really didn't think that I would be able to do," she said.
Race walking rules
Race walking can be incredibly difficult because of the rules which require continual foot contact with the ground while keeping your support leg straight at all times.
"Sometimes the rules can be a little stressful. In freshman year, I did get disqualified twice," Mauri said.
Her coach Daniel Schaub said that's not unusual for new race walkers.
"It's really common for new race walkers to break form early and have to deal with disqualifications," Schaub said. "'G' showed potential right away, and the journey from then has been insane."
Making race walking more popular
As if back-to-back titles weren't enough, Mauri beat her time by almost 14 seconds in the second championship for a personal record.
"It felt amazing because my personal record was 7:23, and I was also kind of upset that I didn't break that at New Balance," she said. "I thought it would be easy to do, but I was so grateful to be able to break that."
"I wasn't surprised and just very proud of her for committing in the way that she has," Schaub said.
Mauri hopes people continue to learn more about this sport. Race walking is not offered at every college track program, but Mauri hopes she will inspire that to change.
"I feel like sometimes people judge it before they know much about it, they think 'oh that's really easy' when it's difficult," she said. "It's one of those sports that if you work for it, you'll be able to accomplish great things."
