Marathon Race Walk Relay, Mixed

Voices clamored for the 50 km walk to be added for women, as it had been at the 2017 and 2019 World Championships, but World Athletics instead elected to discontinue the event for men and replace it with a mixed race walk relay over the marathon distance. The event consisted of teams of one man and one woman, with each walking varied distances of slightly over 10 km, eventually totaling 42.195 km. It was difficult to choose favorites since the event had only been contested once before at the highest level. One could only look to the top race walking nations, such as Spain, Mexico, China, Italy, and Japan. Note that some national teams qualified two teams, like Spain, China, Australia or Japan, and these team compositions were unknown, as national teams could enter six walkers, three men and three women, but obviously only four walkers, two men and two women, would compete.

Spain won the inaugural mixed marathon walk relay with a team of Álvaro Martín and María Pérez. The silver and bronze medals went to Ecuador (Brian Daniel Pintado and Glenda Morejón) and Australia (Rhydian Cowley and Jemima Montag).

On the second leg, a group of eight women had separated themselves from the chasers, and at the beginning of leg three there were six teams in the lead – Ecuador, Spain, Australia, Peru, China, and Mexico. Within a kilometre, however, Ecuador and Spain had gapped the others, with Mexico dropping further back into sixth position. China (Zhang Jun / Yang Jiayu) fell behind when it had to serve time in the penalty box for too many technique violations.

At the final exchange, Martín had given Spain a three-second lead over Ecuador, while Italy had moved into third behind Massimo Stano. Halfway through the final leg, however, Pérez had opened a 30-second lead for Spain over Morejón. They would cross the line in that order, with Pérez comfortable enough in her margin to slap palms with the spectators behind the barriers over the last kilometre, many of them waving Spanish flags. Montag brought Australia back into the bronze medal position with her final leg, with Peru finishing strongly to get fourth place.