Time for a Tony rant.
I love athletics but detest the race walk events. Under the rules at all times one foot must be in contact with the ground. If that rule was followed and enforced I would have no problem. However the runners (sorry walkers) are allowed several warnings for lifting. How on earth can you be allowed any warnings? If you run even for one step you didn't walk the distance! In addition the TV companies always show 'walkers' actually running through their slow mo replays as they did tonight in the WCs. In the past I have even recorded the images and played them back myself to reveal that virtually all 'walkers' are actually running virtually all the time. The sooner they get rid of these cheats and joke of an event the better in my opinion.
rant over.

Absolutely agreed.

I had never heard of such a thing Tony.

The simple, pretty low-cost solution is to have a pressure sensor on the bottom of all contestant's shoes. This could be done via a piezoelectric sheet on the inside of your shoe. I'm sure there are other very low cost, high-reliability options too. Let electronics decide who is cheating or not.

dont get me started on cycling if were talking about cheats...that lot are the worst bunch of druggies ive ever see ...ive seen whole teams booted out for doping.....ive never liked cheats in sport...then the footballers who fake being chopped down ,,,,,,gggrrrr

Ah, tea! The steroids of the mind!

Up for some chess?

The first time I saw the event on TV years ago, I thought it looked really stupid the way they supposedly maximised speed by wiggling their hips. It just didn't look like walking. I have some pride in how fast I usually walk, but I'd stop if it turned out I've been wiggling my hips like that, out of shame. Intense embarassing shame.

Remember the "swimmers" (before the current rules were brought in), especially in the backstroke, who would start a race with almost an entire length underwater because this was faster than on the surface?

Or tennis players who first used carbon fiber, large face rackets? Or golfers using giant head drivers? Or cricketers using aluminium bats? Or everyone using "designer" drugs?

My point is, in this day and age of winning (and therefor money) is everything, people will always push the envelope until rule changes or technology catches up with them. But I do agree with Tony, speed walking is a particularly stupid case.