Sport of athletics

• 1. Introduction

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  Athletics began with a single race. At the first Olympics in 776 BC, the only event was a stadium-length sprint known as the stadion. No throwing, no jumping, no marathon. Just runners covering one length of the track. From that bare beginning grew a group of sporting events built on three simple human actions: competitive running, jumping, and throwing. The simplicity of these competitions, and the absence of any need for expensive equipment, helped make athletics one of the most common sports in the world. But simplicity is deceptive. How did one footrace expand into track and field, road running, cross-country, and race walking? Why does the word itself mean one thing in Britain and another in North America? And how did a sport meant for amateurs end up at the center of disputes over money, sex testing, and disability classification? The answers run from Ancient Egyptian tombs to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

• 2. A Word Divided

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  The word athletics traces to the Ancient Greek athletes, meaning a combatant in public games, rooted in athlon, a prize, and athlos, a competition. At first the term covered athletic contests in general, any sporting competition resting on human physical feats. In the 19th century the meaning narrowed in Europe, coming to describe sports built on competitive running, walking, jumping, and throwing. That narrow definition remains prominent in the United Kingdom and the former British Empire. Related words in Germanic and Romance languages carry a similar meaning. North America took a different path. Across much of the continent, athletics still refers to sports in general, echoing its older usage. The word is rarely used there for the specific sport. Instead, track and field is the predominant term in the United States and Canada. Under that usage, running, jumping, throwing, race walking, and marathon running all count, while cross-country running is generally treated as a separate sport. The same activity, then, carries two different names depending on which side of an ocean you stand.

• 3. Ancient Roots

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  In tombs at Saqqara, Ancient Egyptian artists illustrated running at the Heb Sed festival and high jumping, with some images dating from as early as 2250 BC. Contests in running, walking, jumping, and throwing rank among the oldest of all sports, their roots reaching into prehistory. The Tailteann Games, an ancient Celtic festival in Ireland founded around 1800 BC, ran for thirty days and included running and stone-throwing among its events. The stadion sprint of 776 BC did not stay alone for long. It later expanded to include throwing and jumping within the ancient pentathlon. Athletics contests also appeared at the other Panhellenic Games, founded later around 500 BC. The reverence ran deep in Ancient Greece. Aristotle discussed the pentathlon in his treatise Rhetoric, reflecting on the athletic ideal of the time. He praised a body capable of enduring all efforts, of the racecourse or of bodily strength, and concluded that pentathletes were the most beautiful. That admiration left a physical record. The events inspired large statues such as the Discobolus and the Discophoros, along with motifs on countless vase and pottery works that still survive.

• 4. Building The Modern Sport

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  The Cotswold Olimpick Games, a sports festival that emerged in 17th-century England, featured athletics through sledgehammer throwing contests. From 1796 to 1798, revolutionary France held L'Olympiade de la République, an early forerunner to the modern Olympic Games, with a running event as its premier contest. The 1796 edition introduced the metric system into the sport. Competitions appeared at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, around 1812, and at the Royal Shrewsbury School Hunt in 1840. The Royal Military Academy, Woolwich held an organised competition in 1849, and Exeter College, Oxford ran a regular series of closed meetings for undergraduates from 1850. The annual Wenlock Olympian Games, first held in 1850, folded athletics into its programme. The University of Cambridge founded the first modern athletics club in the world in 1857, with the University of Oxford following in 1860. The two began an annual varsity match in 1864. The London Athletic Club became the first independent athletic club in 1863. The Amateur Athletic Association, established in England in 1880, became the first national body for the sport and began its own AAA Championships. The United States had started its national competition in 1876, first held by the New York Athletic Club.

• 5. From Amateur To Professional

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  The International Amateur Athletics Federation was founded in 1912 and enforced amateur status on competitions through much of the 20th century. Professional competition continued at a low level and grew more common as the decades passed. The International Track Association briefly formed a professional track and field circuit in the United States in the 1970s. Athletes used their rising status to push for payment. The IAAF answered with its Golden Events series and established an outdoor World Championships in 1983, covering track and field, racewalking, and a marathon. Money entered the sport openly, ending the so-called amateurism that came before. The governing body changed its name to the International Association of Athletics Federations in 2001, moving away from its amateur origins, then became World Athletics in 2019. Today World Athletics oversees 215 member nations and territories, divided into six continental areas covering Asia, Africa, Europe, Oceania, the Americas split into north and south. The 1928 Olympics introduced women's events into the athletics programme, which had been open only to men. Athletics has been part of the Paralympic Games since the first edition in 1960. The most prestigious season-long leagues are the Diamond League for track and field and the World Marathon Majors in marathon running.

• 6. The Four Disciplines

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  Track and field is defined by its venue: the athletics stadium. Running events on the track fall into three distance categories, sprints, middle-distance, and long-distance, joined by relay races where four runners pass a baton, and by hurdling and the steeplechase, which add obstacles to clear. Field events split into throwing and jumping. Throwers are measured by distance in the shot put, discus, javelin, and hammer throw. Jumpers contest the long jump and triple jump for horizontal distance, and the high jump and pole vault for height. Combined events, the decathlon and heptathlon, total performances across many events into a single points tally. Road running unfolds mainly on paved or tarmac courses, often finishing inside a stadium. Its roots lie with footmen, male servants who ran alongside aristocrats' carriages in the 18th century and raced as wagers between their masters. The 1896 modern marathon and the 1970s running boom in the United States turned it into a common pastime. Cross-country running is the most naturalistic, run over grass, woodland trails, and earth. The Crick Run in England in 1838 was the first recorded organised cross-country competition. Racewalking, the only event where judges monitor technique, demands a foot always touching the ground and a straightened advancing leg. It grew from pedestrianism in late 18th-century England, where spectators gambled on the walkers.

• 7. Who Gets To Compete

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  Wide variation in ability produced numerous competitive categories so athletes face rivals of similar kind. The foremost division is by sex, with men and women almost always competing separately. The women's division has drawn regular dispute over eligibility. After intersex athletes such as Stanislawa Walasiewicz and Mary Weston found success early in the 20th century, the IAAF introduced sex verification, disqualifying sprinter Foekje Dillema in 1950 when she refused testing. Ewa Klobukowska became the first athlete to publicly fail the test in 1967, and the humiliation that followed pushed the tests into a confidential process. Maria Jose Martinez-Patino was disqualified in 1985, fought the ban in court, and was reinstated in 1988. Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand later took the IAAF to the Court of Arbitration for Sport over the hyperandrogenism rules. In 2019 the United Nations Human Rights Council said the IAAF was breaching international human rights norms and standards. Age divides the sport too, with athletic ability peaking in early adulthood and declining from around 30. Stanislaw Kowalski holds a world record for men aged 105 and over. Age cheating appears as well, as when Thomas Longosiwa used a falsified passport to compete at the 2006 World Junior Championships at age 24.

• 8. Athletes With Disabilities

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  The first international Stoke Mandeville Games in 1952 organised competition for World War II veterans, including only athletes in wheelchairs. That event inspired the first Paralympic Games in 1960, governed in athletics by the International Paralympic Committee. Competitors are classified by disability, so a T12 athlete is a track competitor with a visual impairment. The classification numbers run from 11 to 13 for visual impairment, with athletes competing alongside a sighted guide, through cerebral palsy, amputation, and wheelchair categories. Deaf athletes built a separate tradition, with the first major world competition included at the 1924 Deaflympics. Sound-based elements such as the starter's pistol pose the main barrier, a problem shown when Olivia Breen failed to hear a false start at the 2012 Paralympics. Wheelchair racers, competing in lightweight chairs, consistently beat the runners on foot, and their speed has troubled organisers staggering start times. A collision between Josh Cassidy and Tiki Gelana at the 2013 London Marathon returned that issue to attention. Some athletes reach the level of able-bodied competition. Legally blind Marla Runyan ran in the 2000 and 2004 Olympics. Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee, reached the semi-finals at the 2011 World Championships and won a silver medal with South Africa's 4 x 400 metres relay team.