50 kilometres Race Walk, Men

The East Germany pair of Hartwig Gauder and Ronald Weigel had dominated many of the major championships in the 1980s. Gauder won the 1980 gold medal and the 1987 World Championships, while Weigel was the 1983 World Champion, and held the world record in 1988.

By 30 km, the race had come down to a pack of five – Gauder and Weigel, Soviets Vyacheslav Ivanenko and Aleksandr Potashov, and Spain’s José Marín. By 40 km, Ivanenko had opened a small lead, and he gradually increased that lead over the closing 10 km. He had negatively split the race in the extreme, walking the second 25 km 7½ minutes faster than the first.