Brian Pintado in action at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games (© AFP / Getty Images)
Olympic race walk champion Brian Pintado admits freely he’s up against it to add a world title to his collection in 2025.
It’s not just the opposition battling him to the finish line in Tokyo in September, but the fall-out from new-found fame.
Just a week ago, Pintado became the Ecuadorian face of a famous beer – one with zero alcohol, of course – and in the aftermath of topping the Paris podium, honours, awards, car endorsements, even a TV appearance on his country’s Master Chef, with ceremonies thrown in, of course, have been a time thief on the 29-year-old.
Understandably, Ecuador was delighted to have a second hero 28 years after Jefferson Perez won his country’s first Olympic gold in the same 20km event in Atlanta. It became even better when, six days after taking gold over 20km, Pintado and teammate Glenda Morejón claimed silver in the mixed marathon relay.
But Pintado now has to find the balancing act of making sure a glamorous life doesn’t detract from the hard yards.
“My preparation is going to be difficult,” he said, “because now I have other activities to do: commercial activities with my sponsors, recognitions of my country and my city; social events. And, as far as possible, I am looking for a way to focus all my energies on my preparation.”
To help him do so, he has the ‘best coach in the world’.
Other athletes will probably point to their own mentors as being the ‘best’, but Pintado insists much of his success is down to Andres Chocho, himself an established race walker with a 3:42:57 South American record at 50km and 1:20:07 for the shorter distance.
Brian Pintado at the World Championships in Oregon (© Getty Images)
Chocho has a proven track record as a coach. His wife, Erica Sena, holds the Brazilian record at 1:26:59, and her three appearances in the top eight at the World Championships all came under Chocho’s tutelage.
“Andrés is the best coach in the world,” Pintado insists. “He is my mentor and an example to follow. “As for Jefferson, he has been a great reference since I was a child.”
Pintado’s progress has been as steady as Chocho’s guiding hand.
Leading up to the Olympics, Pintado’s PB each calendar year from 2021 was 1:20:15, 1:19:34, 1:18:26, and 1:17:54 at the La Coruña leg of the World Race Walking Tour in 2024.
It backed up the world 35km silver he earned in Budapest in 2023 in 2:24:34, just four seconds behind Spain’s Álvaro Martin.
Brian Pintado at the World Championships in Budapest (© Getty Images)
In other words, one would be pushed to say his gold came out of the blue.
The interesting thing is Ecuador has only won four Olympic athletics medals: all of them at race walking.
Perez backed up gold in 1996 with silver in 2008, then Pintado’s 20km gold and relay silver alongside Morejón in Paris is the sum total of a country with a population of 18 million.
In fact, Ecuador’s entire medal haul comes from just one city: Cuenca, towards the south of the country. At 2,550 metres above sea level, it comes with a head start for endurance athletes.
But Pintado has a theory why race walking thrives in the area.
“We are very good at it,” he says. “Since we are little, we travel many kilometres walking through Cuenca, the city where Jeff and I were born, and Glenda lives.
“It is very small and gives you the possibility to walk anywhere. And that helps you; you are training from a very young age without realising it.”
And if that resonates with a regime enjoyed, or more likely endured, by African schoolchildren who later become Olympic stars, then Pintado is only too ready to endorse the benefits.
“I travelled three kilometres every day to go to train in the morning and three back,” he recalls. “Then I walked another three kilometres to go to school, and another three kilometres back and so on every day since I was five years old.”
In the past month, Pintado has been back training – and racing – in earnest, and thereby parted from another pleasant distraction; time spent with wife Karen, son, Daniel, and daughter, Montserrath, ‘Montse’.
Brian Pintado in the marathon race walk mixed relay at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games (© Getty Images)
During the Olympic 20km in Paris, he wore a "necklace of my son running beside me” and "a scarf that my grandmother gave me".
After the race, he added: ”It was tough to be away from my family, my wife, my kids, for four months and just seeing them through a screen.
"But they were with me throughout the race. I had a picture of them with me.”
Anyone catching sight of Pintado’s arms will have noticed the unusual tattoos on the right. It’s yet more affiliation and love for his country.
“I just did them for pleasure, but throughout my career they have made sense,” he explained. “I have mountains on my arm that refer to the Andes mountain range; a full moon, because I like to see the mountains with the full moon. I have the Olympic rings on my chest, because for me being in the Olympic Games was always a dream, but I never imagined winning them. Amazing!”
Pintado opened his 2025 campaign last weekend with victory over 35km at the Ecuadorian Race Walking Championships, clocking a comfortable 2:31:56. His path towards the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25 will include three stops on the World Race Walking Tour, including a return to La Coruña, scene of his 20km PB.
“I’ll compete in the 35km in Dudince (22 March), then I plan to go to Rio Maior, (12 April) and La Coruña, (7 June), then, finally, the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.”
Brian Pintado celebrates his Olympic triumph (© AFP / Getty Images)
And if all goes well and lightning strikes twice, will he repeat the famous Cristiano Ronaldo ‘Siiiiii!” goal-scoring salute Pintado emulated at the finish line in Paris?
“I don't plan to do that celebration. In fact, I didn’t plan to do it in Paris either, it just flowed in the moment.”
But you can bet he will celebrate with his family again, and maybe even a sponsored beer – non-alcoholic, of course.
Paul Warburton for World Athletics
