Dream walk: Aussie’s historic athletics world record

Ian Chadband | October 26, 2026

Rebecca Henderson has walked – and splashed – her way into the history books in Japan by becoming the first Australian track and field athlete in a generation to set a senior world record in a championship event.

The rising 25-year-old from Dandenong set a new global mark for the race walk marathon – the sport’s newest championship event – clocking a remarkable three hours 14 minutes 52 seconds at the All Japan Race Walking meeting on Sunday.

What’s more, the Victorian achieved the milestone while having to compete in sodden conditions on a rainy day in Takahata, in northern Japan.

Australian para athletes have broken global records in recent times while Olympic silver medallist Jess Hull also set the world 2000m record a couple of years ago in Monaco in a non-championship discipline.

Yet Henderson’s dream walk was the first time in 20 years that a non-disabled athlete from the country had set a global mark in an official championship event since another Aussie race walker, Nathan Deakes, set the 50km world record on the roads of Geelong in December 2006.

Henderson is a double Olympian who keeps improving, having recently won the Commonwealth Games bronze at 10,000m on the track in Glasgow after last year taking World University Games team silver in Bochum.

But this was by far the biggest achievement of her career in the event which became, along with the half-marathon, a World Athletics official race walk distance in January, replacing the traditional 20km and 35km races. 

The longer race over the official distance of 42.195km clearly suits the Australian, who was making her marathon debut. She had finished ninth in the 35km at last year’s world athletics championships in Tokyo.

Henderson’s time, even in the atrocious conditions, still sliced 19 seconds off the previous record set by Italian Sofia Fiorini when she won the European Championships in Birmingham in August.

She race-walked solo for most of the race, eventually winning the women’s race by 14 minutes while overtaking many of the men in the mixed field.

There was more Australian success in the half-marathon in Takahata as Elizabeth McMillen, who beat Henderson at the Commonwealth Games where she won silver, earned victory in 1:31:31 – the fifth-fastest time yet in the new women’s event and an Australian record, slicing almost seven minutes off her best.

In a landmark double, home athlete, Japan’s Masatora Kawano, two days after his 28th birthday, also set the inaugural men’s world race walk marathon record at the same Takahata event, clocking 2:55:14.

It was the same venue where Kawano also set a world record of 2:21:47 over 35km two years ago.