The King of Racewalking

JEFF HAYNES/AFP-GETTY IMAGES

MIND GAME: Korzeniowski plans victory: "I can't accept athletes who say, 'It's just not my day'"

As Robert Korzeniowski cruises around the track at his training base in the northern French town of Tourcoing, his body — tan, lithe, tautly muscled — obviously belongs to a world-class athlete. But his gait belongs to Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks. His legs do a speedy, almost balletic sashay. His arms pump hard, as if daring his bottom half to go faster. The Pole, world-record holder in the 50-km racewalk, is zooming. "When I train with him," says Norway's Kjersti Plätzer, the 2000 Olympic silver medalist in the women's 20 km, "he walks and I run. He's a god...

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