In earning two walks titles at a global championships the 28-year-old from Huancayo emulated the great Polish walker Robert Korzeniowski, who won the men’s 20km and 50km events at the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

Before last week’s race, Peru had never won a medal at the World Athletics Championships; now, thanks to Garcia Leon, they have two golds.

The Peruvian crossed in a South American record of 2hr 39min 16sec, four minutes inside her previous best, in front of the same silver and bronze medallists from the 20km race.

Korzeniowski’s compatriot Katarzyna Zdzieblo was second in a personal best of 2:40:03 and China’s London 2012 20km gold medallist Shijie Qieyang, who ran virtually the whole race on her own, earned bronze in an Asian record of 2:40:37.

The first men’s World Championship 35km race walk is set to take place on the same one kilometres looped course on Eugene’s Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard on the final day of Sunday (July 24).

The new distance was controversially included in the programme for this year’s World Athletics Championships in place of the 50km, despite much protest from within the walking community.

"We welcome the 35km discipline to the competition programme for this event," Coe said.

"I know it had a complicated birth, but I genuinely do believe that this is the right way to go."

In March the 35km, which will no longer be the accompaniment to the 20km race walk for men and women, was showcased at the two-day 2022 World Athletics Race Walking Team Championships which were moved from Minsk to the Oman capital of Muscat last June due to concerns over political unrest in Belarus.

As in the 20km walk, Garcia Leon went early to the lead and remained there, although she was accompanied for half the race by the Pole who had learned her walking technique at a sports school set up by Korzeniowski.

By the time the field passed through the fourth kilometre the pattern of the race was set, with Garcia Leon and Zdzieblo pushing on at the front and 31-year-old Qieyang, who took 20km silver at the Doha 2019 World Championships, running alone some way back, but well ahead of the chasing group of a dozen walkers.

By the time Garcia Leon, wearing sunglasses for most of the race despite the absence of any sunshine, passed the 20km marker in 1:31:49 - a time that would have earned her 13^th place in the 20kmm walk on Friday (July 15) - she had established an 11-second lead.

The Pole, grimacing with the effort, narrowed that gap to just seven seconds at the 25km mark but that was as close as she got as the Peruvian pushed on again for her historic victory.