Maria Perez finished ninth in the ranking of the Best Female World Athlete of 2026 by World Athletics. The Granadan athlete sits among the top ten of international athletics at the close of a season that peaked in Birmingham, where she was crowned the European champion in the women’s half-marathon race walk. In the distance’s European Championship debut, Perez won with 1:30:06 and established the first world record for the event. The result extends a career that, since Budapest 2023, has included four individual world titles and two Olympic medals.
Birmingham, Maria Perez’s best day in 2026
The European Championship was the event that defined the Spaniard’s season. Birmingham added the half-marathon race walk to its program, a 21.097-kilometer race that extended by a little over one kilometer the distance in which Perez had won Olympic silver two years earlier. The Granadan wrapped up the debut with continental gold and a time of 1:30:06. The 1:30:06 carries value beyond the championship result. Once established as the first world record for the distance, it becomes the benchmark time for future competitions. Perez, who had already won at major championships over 20 and 35 kilometers, thus added a third individual distance to her international résumé. Birmingham was also the fourth major international championship in a row in which Perez earned at least one gold. She had achieved it at the World Championships in Budapest and Tokyo and at the Paris Olympic Games. In 2026 she did so in a European Championship and in a distance that was contested for the first time at the championships. Each of those titles arrived under different circumstances, from the Paris mixed relay to an individual half-marathon in Birmingham.
What the 1:30:06 means in half-marathon race walking
The Birmingham time equates to an average pace of 4:16 per kilometer. It is a way to translate the result into a familiar reference for anyone who has ever run a half-marathon. The distance is the same, but in race walking the speed is constrained by the technical demands of the discipline throughout the course. That average corresponds to Perez’s total time and provides a measure of the speed she maintained over the 21.097 kilometers. The half-marathon posed a different challenge compared to her two World Championship events. Relative to the 20 kilometers, it added 1,097 meters of effort. Relative to the 35, she shortened the distance by almost 14 kilometers. In terms of distance, the event was much closer to her Olympic silver in the 20 kilometers, though it required distributing the effort over a longer period. Her record in the 35 kilometers also reflects her capacity to compete in longer events. The title and the world record will follow different trajectories from here. The gold identifies Perez as the winner of the first European Half-Marathon Race Walk. The 1:30:06 leaves a time by which future performances in the discipline will be measured. In Birmingham, both led back to the same race.
From Budapest’s two golds to Paris’s two medals
The cycle that led to Birmingham had one of its decisive moments at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest. Perez won the 20- and 35-kilometer walks there in the same edition. The two titles arrived in individual events separated by 15 kilometers, a difference that provides perspective on what it meant to prevail in both in a single championships. A year later she stood on the podium twice again, this time at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. She earned silver in the 20 kilometers and won the gold in the mixed relay of the marathon walk alongside Álvaro Martín. The first medal confirmed her place among the world’s best at the shorter distance of her Budapest titles. The second added a format to her résumé where the result depended on both walkers’ performance. In two seasons, Perez had won two individual world titles and a shared Olympic gold, in addition to the silver in the 20 kilometers. Tokyo was going to present her with a challenge she knew well: to win both race-walking events in the same World Championships edition.
Tokyo 2025, the second global double
Best Female Athlete Outside the Stadium. The award recognized the year of her second global double within the category that gathers events held outside the stadium. A year later, the international federation again places her among the season’s standout figures, this time with a ninth place in the overall women’s ranking. The 2026 result adds a different championship and a new distance to the balance. In Tokyo, Perez again won the two events she had dominated since Budapest. In Birmingham, her season was marked by a single race that gave her the European title and left the first world record for the half-marathon race walk.
Jefferson-Wooden, Russell and Werro vie for the world award
Two Americans and one Swiss race to win the title of Best Female World Athlete of 2026. Their results stem from three different specialties and bring together some of the year’s standout marks in speed, hurdles, and middle-distance.
