Portal:Sport of athletics

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Athletics is a group of sporting events that involves competitive running, jumping, throwing, and walking. The most common types of athletics competitions are track and field, road running, cross-country running, and racewalking.

The results of racing events are decided by finishing position (or time, where measured), while the jumps and throws are won by the athlete that achieves the highest or furthest measurement from a series of attempts. The simplicity of the competitions, and the lack of a need for expensive equipment, makes athletics one of the most common types of sports in the world. Athletics is mostly an individual sport, with the exception of relay races and competitions which combine athletes' performances for a team score, such as cross country.

Organized athletics are traced back to the Ancient Olympic Games from 776 BC. The rules and format of the modern events in athletics were defined in Western Europe and North America in the 19th and early 20th century, and were then spread to other parts of the world. Most modern top level meetings are held under the auspices of World Athletics, the global governing body for the sport of athletics, or its member continental and national federations. (Full article...)

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  Image 1Arne Andersson (left) and Gunder Hägg (right) broke a number of middle distance world records in the 1940s. (from Track and field)
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  Image 2The 2006 European Athletics ChampionshipsatUllevi Stadium (from Track and field)
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  Image 3The start of a typical cross country race, as an official fires a gun to signal the start (from Cross country running)
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  Image 4Naide Gomes in the jumping phase of the event (from Track and field)
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  Image 5Girls handing over the baton in a relay race in Leipzig in 1950 (from Track and field)
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  Image 6Panathenaic StadiuminAthens, one of the first modern track and field stadiums (from Track and field)
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  Image 7Ethiopian runner Kenenisa Bekele leading in a long-distance track event (from Track and field)
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  Image 8Shaul Ladany (centre), in 1969 (from Racewalking)
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  Image 9The pole vault competition at the 2007 Pan American Games (from Track and field)
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  Image 10The 100 m final at the 2008 Summer Olympics (from Track and field)
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  Image 11Yury Shayunou spinning with the hammer within the circle in hammer throw (from Track and field)
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  Image 12Anna Giordano Bruno releases the pole after clearing the bar in pole vault (from Track and field)
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  Image 13A women's 400 m hurdles race at the 2007 Dutch Championships (from Track and field)
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  Image 14Marion Jones, after admitting to doping, lost her Olympic medals, was banned from the sport, and spent six months in jail. (from Track and field)
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  Image 15Remigius Machura preparing to throw within the circle in shot put (from Track and field)
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  Image 16A children's cross country competition in Čakovec, Croatia (from Cross country running)
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  Image 17Runners at the 2010 European Cross Country ChampionshipsinAlbufeira, Portugal (from Cross country running)
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  Image 18The Roy Griak Invitational cross country meet at the University of Minnesota in September 2007 (from Cross country running)
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  Image 19A racewalker "flying" (entirely out of contact with the ground, a rule violation) (from Racewalking)
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  Image 20A typical layout of an outdoor track and field stadium (from Track and field)
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  Image 21Edvin Wide, Ville Ritola, and Paavo Nurmi (on left) competing in the individual cross country race at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris; due to the hot weather, which exceeded 40 °C (104 °F), only 15 out of 38 competitors finished the race. (from Cross country running)
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  Image 22The finish of a women's 100 m race (from Track and field)
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  Image 23American athlete Jim Thorpe lost his Olympic medals after taking expense money prior to the 1912 Summer Olympics for playing baseball, a violation of Olympic amateurism rules. (from Track and field)
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  Image 24Ajavelin throw athlete (from Track and field)
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  Image 25A graph of the world record progression in the men's 100 metres (from Track and field)
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  Image 26The Gordon Indoor Track sports an 80-yard sprint straight, and the track is 220 yards in length. (from Track and field)
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  Image 27The New York State Federation Championship cross country meet in November 2010 (from Cross country running)
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  Image 28An early model of hurdling at the Detroit Athletic Club in 1888 (from Track and field)
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  Image 29A woman attempting to high jump while using the Fosbury Flop technique (from Track and field)
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  Image 30Carl Lewis, one of the athletes who helped increase track and field's profile (from Track and field)
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  Image 31Zoltán Kővágó preparing to spin and throw in discus throw (from Track and field)
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  Image 32AnAncient Greece vase from 600 BC depicting a running contest (from Track and field)
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  Image 33Men assuming the starting position for a sprint race (from Track and field)
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  Image 34A child taking part in a local schools meeting in Cambodia (from Track and field)
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  Image 35Oscar Pistorius running in the first round of the 400 m at the 2012 Summer Olympics (from Track and field)
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  Image 36Men traversing the water jump in a steeplechase competition (from Track and field)

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Canadian high jumper Nicole Forrester demonstrating the Fosbury flop

The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern, most-practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat for landing. Since ancient times, competitors have introduced increasingly effective techniques to arrive at the current form, and the current universally preferred method is the Fosbury Flop, in which athletes run towards the bar and leap head first with their back to the bar.

The discipline is, alongside the pole vault, one of two vertical clearance events in the Olympic athletics program. It is contested at the World Championships in Athletics and the World Athletics Indoor Championships, and is a common occurrence at track and field meets. The high jump was among the first events deemed acceptable for women, having been held at the 1928 Olympic Games.

Javier Sotomayor (Cuba) is the current world record holder with a jump of 2.45 m (8 ft 1⁄4 in) set in 1993 – the longest-standing record in the history of the men's high jump. Stefka Kostadinova (Bulgaria) has held the women's world record of 2.09 m (6 ft 10+1⁄4 in) since 1987, also the longest-held record in the event. (Full article...)

Selected picture

Steeplechase

Credit: Albertus teolog, 10 July 2008

Athlete birthdays

3 July:

• Johnny Gibson, American hurdler
• Remigius Machura, Czechoslovakian shot putter
• Churandy Martina, Dutch sprinter
• Mizuki Noguchi, Japanese distance runner
• Daniel Plaza, Spanish race walker

4 July:

• John Anderson, American discus thrower
• Wude Ayalew, Ethiopian distance runner
• Amantle Montsho, Botswanan sprinter
• Aurèle Vandendriessche, Belgian distance runner

5 July:

• Abeba Aregawi, Ethiopian-Swedish middle-distance runner
• Matthew Birir, Kenyan steeplechase runner
• Valentí Massana, Spanish race walker
• Wim Peters, Dutch triple jumper
• Carlo Thränhardt, German high jumper
• John Woodruff, American middle-distance runner

• Valerie Brisco-Hooks, American sprinter
• Rex Cawley, American hurdler
• Benita Fitzgerald-Brown, American hurdler
• Gunhild Hoffmeister, German middle-distance runner
• Arthur Lydiard, New Zealand coach
• Mary Peters, British pentathlete
• Zhanna Pintusevich-Block, Ukrainian sprinter
• Jozef Pribilinec, Czechoslovakian race walker
• László Tábori, Hungarian middle-distance runner

7 July:

• Murray Halberg, New Zealand distance runner
• Kerstin Knabe, German hurdler
• Adam Nelson, American shot putter
• Tina Paulino, Mozambican middle-distance runner

8 July:

• Harrison Dillard, American hurdler and sprinter
• Shalane Flanagan, American distance runner
• Olesya Krasnomovets, Russian sprinter
• Wang Liping, Chinese race walker

Related portals

Olympic Games

Sports

More did you know

Coe during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2012

Sebastian Newbold Coe, Baron Coe CH KBE Hon FRIBA (born 29 September 1956), often referred to as Seb Coe, is a British politician and former track and field athlete. As a middle-distance runner, Coe won four Olympic medals, including 1500 metres gold medals at the Olympic Gamesin1980 and 1984. He set nine outdoor and three indoor world records in middle-distance track events – including, in 1979, setting three world records in the space of 41 days – and the world record he set in the 800 metres in 1981 remained unbroken until 1997. Coe's rivalries with fellow Britons Steve Ovett and Steve Cram dominated middle-distance racing for much of the 1980s.

Following Coe's retirement from athletics, he was a Conservative member of parliament from 1992 to 1997 for Falmouth and Camborne in Cornwall, and became a Life Peer on 16 May 2000.

Coe headed the successful London 2012 Olympic bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics and became chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games. In 2007, he was elected a vice-president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), and re-elected for another four-year term in 2011. In August 2015, he was elected president of the IAAF.

In 2012, Coe was appointed Pro-ChancellorofLoughborough University where he had been an undergraduate. Subsequently, in 2017, he was appointed as Chancellor. He is also a member of Loughborough University's governing body. He was one of 24 athletes inducted as inaugural members of the IAAF Hall of Fame. In November 2012, he was appointed chairman of the British Olympic Association. Coe was presented with the Lifetime Achievement award at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year in December 2012.

At the 2024 Millrose Games, Coe was awarded The Armory's Presidents Award. (Full article...)

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• ... that in the 1932 baseball game in which pitcher Eddie Rommel won his last game, he pitched 17 innings in relief, an American League record?

World records

Event	Men	Record	Women	Record
100 m	Usain Bolt	9.58	Florence Griffith Joyner	10.49
200 m	Usain Bolt	19.19	Florence Griffith Joyner	21.34
400 m	Wayde van Niekerk	43.03	Marita Koch	47.60
800 m	David Rudisha	1:40.91	Jarmila Kratochvílová	1:53.28
1500 m	Hicham El Guerrouj	3:26.00	Faith Kipyegon	3:49.11
5000 m	Joshua Cheptegei	12:35.36	Gudaf Tsegay	14:00.21
10,000 m	Joshua Cheptegei	26:11.00	Letesenbet Gidey	29:01.03
Marathon	Kelvin Kiptum	2:00:35	Brigid Kosgei	2:14:04
3000 m steeplechase	Lamecha Girma	7:52.11	Beatrice Chepkoech	8:44.32
110 / 100 m hurdles	Aries Merritt	12.80	Tobi Amusan	12.12
400 m hurdles	Karsten Warholm	45.94	Sydney McLaughlin	50.68
High jump	Javier Sotomayor	2.45 m	Stefka Kostadinova	2.09 m
Pole vault	Armand Duplantis	6.23 m	Yelena Isinbayeva	5.06 m
Long jump	Mike Powell	8.95 m	Galina Chistyakova	7.52 m
Triple jump	Jonathan Edwards	18.29 m	Yulimar Rojas	15.74 m
Shot put	Ryan Crouser	23.56 m	Natalya Lisovskaya	22.63 m
Discus throw	Jürgen Schult	74.08 m	Gabriele Reinsch	76.80 m
Hammer throw	Yuriy Sedykh	86.74 m	Anita Włodarczyk	82.98 m
Javelin throw	Jan Železný	98.48 m	Barbora Špotáková	72.28 m
Decathlon/Heptathlon	Kevin Mayer	9126 pts.	Jackie Joyner-Kersee	7291 pts.
20 km racewalk	Yusuke Suzuki	1:16:36	Yang Jiayu	1:23:49
4×100 m relay	Jamaica	36.84	United States	40.82
4×400 m relay	United States	2:54.29	Soviet Union	3:15.17

See also: List of world records in athletics

Athletics events

Athletics competitions

Event	1st edition	Kind of competition	Can participate
Olympic Games	1896	World games	Worldwide
World Championships	1983	World championships
World Indoor Championships	1985
European Championships	1934	Continental championships	Europe
European Indoor Championships	1966
South American Championships	1919		South America
Asian Championships	1973		Asia
African Championships	1979		Africa
Ocenian Championships	1990		Oceania

More about Athletics competitions

Federations

• International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF)
• European Athletics Association (EAA)
• Confederation of African Athletics (CAA)
• Asian Athletics Association (AAA)
• North American, Central American and Caribbean Athletic Association
• CONSUDATLE
• Oceania Athletics Association (OAA)

Nationals

•  Australia: Athletics Australia (AA)
•  Brazil: Brazilian Athletics Confederation (CBAt)
•  Canada: Athletics Canada (AC)
•  Czech: Czech Athletics Federation (ČAS)
•  France: Fédération française d'athlétisme (FFA)
•  Germany: German Athletics Association (DLV)
•  Italy: Italian Athletics Federation (FIDAL)
•  Jamaica: Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA)
•  Japan: Japan Association of Athletics Federations (JAAF)
•  Kenya: Athletics Kenya (AK)
•  China: Chinese Athletic Association
•  Norway: Norwegian Athletics Association
•  Romania: Romanian Athletics Federation
•  Spain: Royal Spanish Athletics Federation (RFEA)
•  Great Britain: UK Athletics (UKA)
•  United States: USA Track & Field (USATF)

Others

•  Wales: Welsh Athletics (WA)
•  England: Amateur Athletic Association of England (AAA)
•  Scotland: Scottishathletics
• Athletic Association of Small States of Europe (AASSE)

More about Athletics organizations

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