Tokyo Gold to Tour Glory: Perez and Dunfee Finish 2025 on Top

The World Race Walking Tour has handed out its 2025 crowns, and the verdict is gloriously blunt: if you spent the year trying to beat Maria Perez or Evan Dunfee, you mostly spent the year watching their backsides disappear down the road.

After the Tour wrapped up in Dublin on Sunday, world champions Perez (Spain) and Dunfee (Canada) were confirmed as the overall winners—top of the standings, top of the sport, and $25,000 richer each for the trouble.

This series isn’t decided by vibes or viral clips. The scoring system takes each athlete’s three best world ranking performances, adds them up, and spits out a number that does not care about your excuses. Highest total wins. Simple. Brutal. Fair.

Maria Perez: undefeated, unbothered, and historically high-scoring

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Perez didn’t just win; she tidied up the season like someone closing down a restaurant after the last customer has left. At the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25, she retained both her 20km and 35km titles, clocking 1:25:54 and 2:39:01. That 35km performance score became a key piece of her season tally in the World Race Walking Tour.

And this wasn’t a one-week wonder. Before Tokyo, Perez won over 20km in La Coruna and took 35km at the European Race Walking Team Championships in Podebrady. No wobble, no dip, no “nearly” story for someone else to tell.

The result: an undefeated season capped by a winning score of 4136 in the World Race Walking Tour—the highest any athlete has achieved in the standings in its current format. That is not a statistic. That’s a statement.

Behind her, the chase was tight enough to make you check the maths twice. The athletes who claimed silver medals behind Perez in Tokyo—Mexico’s Alegna Gonzalez and Italy’s Antonella Palmisano—finished second and third in the tour standings with just two points separating them. Gonzalez placed second to Perez in La Coruna, then won 35km in Dublin in a North American record. Palmisano finished second to Perez in Podebrady, which is about as close as most people got all year.

Evan Dunfee: records early, world title late, and a men’s Tour mark to match

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Dunfee’s 2025 road campaign began like a door being kicked off its hinges. In Adelaide in February, he set a North American record of 1:17:39 over 20km. A month later, he broke the 35km race walk world record with 2:21:40 in Dudince.

Then he finished the year the way champions tend to—by delivering when the medals are real. In Tokyo, Dunfee clinched gold in the longer discipline in 2:28:22, which took his Tour tally to 4077—the highest score ever achieved in the men’s standings in its current format.

In other words, the World Race Walking Tour didn’t so much “reward consistency” as it rewarded someone who spent the year turning major races into a personal highlight reel.

The men’s chase: Bonfim and McGrath keep the pressure on

Second in the standings was Brazil’s Caio Bonfim, who also took 35km silver behind Dunfee in Tokyo. Earlier in the year, he won in Kobe with a national record of 1:17:37, proving his engine runs hot in more than one postcode.

Third went to Spain’s Paul McGrath, the world 20km bronze medallist and a winner at the European Race Walking Team Championships. On a different season, those results might have been enough to win the lot. This season, they were enough to finish behind a Canadian who broke a world record and then pocketed a world title for good measure.

What’s next: 2026 dates already on the calendar

The 2026 World Race Walking Tour—spanning Europe, Asia, North and South America, and Oceania—kicks off on 11 January with the USA 35km Race Walking Championships. The first Gold level meeting of the season follows on 1–2 March in Taicang.

If 2025 taught us anything, it’s that the early-season “marker” races aren’t warm-ups anymore. They’re where the Tour gets shaped, the points start stacking, and the champions begin separating themselves before anyone’s even finished their first proper cup of coffee.