Athletics

Athletics, or track & field, is the original Olympic sport. The first event contested in the Ancient Olympics was the stadion, a sprint of about 190 metres. Recorded victors in this event are known as far back as 776 BCE. Other athletics events in the Ancient Olympics included longer races, races in armor (hoplite), and a pentathlon consisting of the stadion, long jump, discus throw, javelin throw, and wrestling.

Throughout recorded sports history, athletics has always been practiced. Many of the attempted revivals of the Olympics in the 19th century consisted mostly of athletics events. Since the revival of the Olympics in 1896, athletics has been the most publicized sport on the Olympic Programme. Today, athletics is rivaled only by football (soccer) and volleyball as the sport practiced in the most countries in the world, based on number of nations within their international federations. The sport is governed internationally by World Athletics (WA) (formerly the International Amateur Athletic Federation [IAAF]), which was formed on 17 July 1912, in Stockholm. As of 2024, the organization has 214 affiliated countries and territories as members.

Athletics has been held at every Olympics. Women’s athletics began at the 1928 Olympics and has been contested continually since. The programme has varied but has been fairly standard since 1932. As of 2024, the current programme includes: sprint races (100, 200, and 400 metres); middle-distance races (800 and 1,500 metres); distance races (5,000 metres, 10,000 metres and the marathon [26 miles, 385 yards (42.195 km)]); hurdle races (110 metres for men, 100 metres for women, and 400 metres for both); steeplechase (3,000 metres for men and women); walking events (20 km. for men and women); flat jumping events (long jump and triple jump); vertical jumping events (high jump and pole vault); throwing events (shot put, discus throw, hammer throw, and javelin throw); and multi-events (decathlon for men and heptathlon for women). The Olympic Programme also includes 4x100 metre relay and 4x400 metre relay events for both men and women. Tokyo 2020 witnessed the first mixed 4x400 metres relay competition. Paris 2024 also brought news in the racewalking events: men only competed in the 20 km. event (until Tokyo 2020, they also had a 50 km. event), and a mixed marathon race walk relay was contested for the first time.

Although women were first allowed to compete in only a few events, today they have a programme with in as many events as the men, as noted above. The only current differences in the women’s programme are that they compete in the heptathlon, as opposed to the decathlon for men, and their high hurdles events is a different distance (100 metres for women vs 110 metres for men).

The United States’ men have always been the top performers in the world in track & field athletics. Among the women, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR – East Germany) were the top powers after their admission to the Olympics, and prior to their dissolution by the political events at the end of the 1980s. The table is led, by far, by the USA, with 862 medals and 358 golds, as of 2024.

Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi and American runner and jumper Carl Lewis lead the overall medal score, with 12 and 10 medals, respectively. They also lead the gold medal count, both with nine golds, followed by the eight gold medals of American high jumper Ray Ewry (10 golds, if including the 1906 Intercalated Olympics) and Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt.

American runner Allyson Felix is the top female performer, with seven golds and 11 medals. Jamaican sprinter Elaine Thompson-Herah follows Felix in the gold medal count, with five golds and a silver. In the overall medal count, Felix is followed by three other Jamaicans: Merlene Ottey-Page (nine medals but no gold), and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Veronica Campbell-Brown (both with eight medals and three golds).