The purpose of this paper is to identify the reasons why, was held in Costa Rica, in the first decades of the twentieth century, a unique sports event of a global nature, which consisted of a foot race over 100 kilometers, between San Jose and Puntarenas, carried out mainly on the railway sleepers. The  novelty  of  this  historical  research  is  that  it  analyzes  the  impact  of  sport  in  the Costa Rican society from a social perspective broader than just traditional chronological and anecdotal description of an event of this magnitude, identifying the main actors involved in such a articular event and analyzed its development and the main reasons for his suspension from a technical standpoint. The work is divided into three chapters. The first of them contains information about who organized the event and its purpose, which was its length, number of participants and prizes. In the second section describes the main events taking place of that particular competition, which were the main characters and how they prepared. And at last, we analyze the reasons for which in 1938 was the last time, and those influenced to leave the sports show to perform.

Race walking; History; Sport