Portal:Sport of athletics
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Event | 1st edition | Kind of competition | Can participate |
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Olympic Games | 1896 | World games | ![]() |
World Championships | 1983 | World championships | |
World Indoor Championships | 1985 | ||
European Championships | 1934 | Continental championships | ![]() |
European Indoor Championships | 1966 | ||
South American Championships | 1919 | ![]() | |
Asian Championships | 1973 | ![]() | |
African Championships | 1979 | ![]() | |
Ocenian Championships | 1990 | ![]() |
Introduction
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/Discobulus.jpg/640px-Discobulus.jpg)
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...)
General images - load new batch
- Image 2Runners at the 2010 European Cross Country Championships in Albufeira, Portugal (from Cross country running)
- Image 3Ethiopian runner Kenenisa Bekele leading in a long-distance track event (from Track and field)
- Image 4A typical layout of an outdoor track and field stadium (from Track and field)
- Image 6American 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)
- Image 8Men traversing the water jump in a steeplechase competition (from Track and field)
- Image 10Marion Jones, after admitting to doping, lost her Olympic medals, was banned from the sport, and spent six months in jail. (from Track and field)
- Image 11Arne Andersson (left) and Gunder Hägg (right) broke a number of middle distance world records in the 1940s. (from Track and field)
- Image 12A woman attempting to high jump while using the Fosbury Flop technique (from Track and field)
- Image 16Men assuming the starting position for a sprint race (from Track and field)
- Image 17A racewalker "flying" (entirely out of contact with the ground, a rule violation) (from Racewalking)
- Image 19Edvin 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)
- Image 20The Roy Griak Invitational cross country meet at the University of Minnesota in September 2007 (from Cross country running)
- Image 24The Gordon Indoor Track sports an 80-yard sprint straight, and the track is 220 yards in length. (from Track and field)
- Image 25Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, one of the first modern track and field stadiums (from Track and field)
- Image 26The New York State Federation Championship cross country meet in November 2010 (from Cross country running)
- Image 28Yury Shayunou spinning with the hammer within the circle in hammer throw (from Track and field)
- Image 29The start of a typical cross country race, as an official fires a gun to signal the start (from Cross country running)
- Image 30Carl Lewis, one of the athletes who helped increase track and field's profile (from Track and field)
- Image 31Anna Giordano Bruno releases the pole after clearing the bar in pole vault (from Track and field)
- Image 35Oscar Pistorius running in the first round of the 400 m at the 2012 Summer Olympics (from Track and field)
Selected article
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/24/World_Athletics_logo.svg/640px-World_Athletics_logo.svg.png)
The World Athletics Awards is a prize that can be won by athletes participating in events within the sport of athletics organised by World Athletics (formerly named IAAF), including track and field, cross country running, road running, and racewalking.
The first athletes awarded World Athlete of the Year in 1988 were Americans, namely sprinter Florence Griffith-Joyner and track and field athlete Carl Lewis.
Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt is the only athlete, male or female, to win the World Athlete of the Year Awards six times. Russian pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva and Morocco's middle-distance runner Hicham El Guerrouj have won the main award three times. American track and field athlete Marion Jones, sprinter Sanya Richards-Ross representing the USA, Carl Lewis and other American sprinter Michael Johnson, Ethiopia's long-distance runner Kenenisa Bekele, Kenya's long-distance runner Eliud Kipchoge, and Swedish pole vaulter Armand Duplantis have won the award twice each.
The Rising Star of the Year award was inaugurated in 2005, when Great Britain's sprinter Harry Aikines-Aryeetey was awarded. The first woman to be voted was steeplechase specialist, Ruth Bosibori of Kenya, in 2007.
Belgian heptathlete Nafissatou Thiam was the first to receive Rising Star award followed by Athlete of the Year trophy. The other athletes to achieve the feat were Venezuela's triple jumper Yulimar Rojas, Swedish pole vaulter Armand Duplantis, and Norwegian hurdler Karsten Warholm. In 2022, American sprinter Erriyon Knighton became the first athlete to be crowned Rising Star twice. (Full article...)
More selected articles |
Selected picture
Athlete birthdays
23 July:
- Stéphane Diagana, French hurdler
- Maurice Greene, American sprinter
- Natasha Hastings, American sprinter
- Dmitriy Karpov, Kazakh decathlete
- Bo Roberson, American long jumper
- Dave Roberts, American pole vaulter
- Yelena Sokolova, Russian long jumper
- Cy Young, American javelin thrower
24 July:
- Lyudmila Bragina, Soviet middle-distance runner
- Wilfred Bungei, Kenyan middle-distance runner
- Mikhail Khmelnitskiy, Belarusian race walker
- Yago Lamela, Spanish long jumper
- Aries Merritt, American hurdler
- Malte Mohr, German pole vaulter
- David Payne, American hurdler
- George Saling, American hurdler
- Ivan Tikhon, Belarusian hammer thrower
- George Young, American distance runner
25 July:
- George Brown, American long jumper
- Javier Culson, Puerto Rican hurdler
- Artur Partyka, Polish high jumper
- John Pennel, American pole vaulter
- Annarita Sidoti, Italian race walker
- Dave Sime, American sprinter
26 July:
- Iolanda Chen, Russian triple jumper
- Galina Chistyakova, Soviet long jumper
- Valentin Gavrilov, Soviet high jumper
- Gary Honey, Australian long jumper
- Kyriakos Ioannou, Cypriot high jumper
- Pat McDonald, American shot putter and weight thrower
- Miesha McKelvy-Jones, American hurdler
- Ramona Neubert, German heptathlete
- Denis Nizhegorodov, Russian race walker
- Pyotr Pochinchuk, Soviet race walker
- Ingo Schultz, German sprinter
27 July:
- Eduard Gushchin, Soviet shot putter
- Samuel Matete, Zambian hurdler
- Paul Meier, German decathlete
- David Storl, German shot putter
- Ellen Streidt, German sprinter
- Armas Taipale, Finnish discus thrower
- Stanislav Tarasenko, Russian long jumper
28 July:
- Mark Boswell, Canadian high jumper
- Barbara Ferrell, American sprinter
- Karl-Friedrich Haas, German sprinter
- Attila Horváth, Hungarian discus thrower
- Gerhard Stöck, German javelin thrower and shot putter
- Eva Wilms, German shot putter and pentathlete
29 July:
- Sally Gunnell, British hurdler
- Mikaela Ingberg, Finnish javelin thrower
- Maricica Puică, Romanian middle-distance runner
Related portals
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- ... that all four deaths in the thirty annual Chicago Marathons have occurred in the last ten years?
- ... that wind assistance has caused the non-ratification of many potential world records in athletics?
- ... that Patrick Ivuti's photo finish victory in the 2007 Chicago Marathon, one of the five major marathons, was his first marathon victory?
Archive |
Selected biography
Stefka Georgieva Kostadinova (Bulgarian: Стефка Георгиева Костадинова; born 25 March 1965) is a Bulgarian former athlete who competed in the high jump. Her world record of 2.09 metres stood since 1987 until being broken by Yaroslava Mahuchikh in 2024. She is the 1996 Olympic champion, a two-time World champion, and a five-time World Indoor champion. She has been the president of the Bulgarian Olympic Committee since 2005. (Full article...)
Kostadinova was reigning world record holder in the women's high jump until July 2024. She set a world record of 2.09 m at the 1987 World Championships in Athletics in Rome. Altogether Kostadinova set seven world records - three outdoors and four indoors. She also holds the distinction of having jumped over 2.00 m 197 times.
Kostadinova won the gold medal in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, setting an Olympic record of 2.05 m. She also won a silver medal at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. Kostadinova won the outdoor World Championships in 1987 and 1995. She won the World Indoor Championship five times between 1985 and 1997. Kostadinova also won gold in all European Championships in Athletics in which she competed. She was a European outdoor champion in Stuttgart in 1986 and a four-time European indoor champion in 1985, 1987, 1988, and 1994.
More selected biographies |
Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/Nuvola_apps_filetypes.svg/47px-Nuvola_apps_filetypes.svg.png)
- ... 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?
- ... that German runner Alica Schmidt, who is running in the Women's 4 × 400 metres relay at the 2020 Summer Olympics, has won multiple European junior relay medals?
- ... that the men's 100 metres event at the 2023 British Athletics Championships was run in heavy rain?
- ... that at the 2022 British Indoor Athletics Championships, Lorraine Ugen equalled the championship long jump record?
- ... that at the 2022 British Athletics Championships, Daryll Neita became the first woman since 2010 to win both the 100- and 200-metre events?
- ... that when the Oakland Athletics promoted Bill McNulty to the major leagues, they needed forest rangers to find him?
- ... that Femke Bol won the women's 400 metres hurdles at the 2024 European Athletics Championships in a championship record of 52.49 seconds?
- ... that Marthe Yankurije, who dropped out of school during her fourth year of secondary school, competed at the 2020 Summer Olympics?
World records
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Track_and_Field.svg/30px-Track_and_Field.svg.png)
Topics
Athletics events
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Athletics competitions
It's from the first edition (1896 Summer Olympics), that Athletics has been considered the "Queen" of the Olympics. Since then there have been a series of competitions organized at world level, than at the continental level. Furthermore, the Athletics is the main sport of nearly all multi-sport events such as Universiade, Mediterranean Games or Pan American Games. The following list refers to the main Athletics competitions that take place in the world.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Track_and_Field.svg/30px-Track_and_Field.svg.png)
Federations
- Internationals
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)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Track_and_Field.svg/30px-Track_and_Field.svg.png)
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