our history

A small group of athletes lead by Jaan Roos got together in 1984 to learn all they could about racewalking.

This small group continued to grow and the club became incorporated as the Ontario Racewalkers Association in 1992 and has been going strong ever since. The club trains year round at various locations including indoor in the winter.

In December 2004, Jaan Roos retired from the club but remains active as a Walks Judge.

In January 2005, Stafford Whalen was elected President of the Ontario Racewalkers and remains the president today. Stafford is also the Head Coach of the club.

In 2009, we designed a new logo for the club

As of 2016, Lily Whalen was added as the Assistant Head Coach. Lily has a 40 year background as a national and international Racewalker and brings considerable skills to the position.

At the 2018 World Championships in Spain we won 7 gold medals. Our oldest athlete, Jean Horne won 2 gold medals and she was only 86 years old

We changed the club’s competition Jersey from

to

The Ontario Racewalkers wanted a Web Site for athletes of all abilities. A site that can give them most of what they need. An exciting video, an instructive slide presentation and basic training programs to get them started. The site also lists our clubs training schedule and locations, upcoming athlete clinics and racewalk results with photos from many of the events. There are not enough Judges across Canada, so we also offer Clinics for racewalk officials that want to learn how to Judge. Judging clinics include fun animated videos and slides presentations. This is not available in any other Canadian racewalking site that we know of.