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 Program. 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 the international federation. The sport is governed internationally by the World Athletics (WA) (formerly the International Amateur Athletic Federation [IAAF]), which was formed on 17 July 1912 in Stockholm. The organization has 214 member nations as of 2022.

Athletics has been held at every Olympics. Women’s athletics began at the 1928 Olympics and has been contested continually since. The program has varied but has been fairly standard since 1932. The current program 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 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, and 50 km for men), 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 program also includes 4x100 metres relay and 4x400 metres relay events for both men and women. Tokyo 2020 witnessed the first mixed 4x400 metres relay competition.

Although women were first allowed to compete in only a few events, today they have a program with almost as many events as the men. The only current differences in the women’s program are that they compete in the heptathlon, as opposed to the decathlon for men, and their high hurdles events is a different distance (100 m for women vs 110 m 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 828 medals and 343 golds.

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 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.