Athletics

Athletics, also called track and field, is a group of sports built on running, jumping and throwing, in which competitors are judged by time, distance or height. It is governed worldwide by World Athletics, which had 214 member countries and territories in January 2026, and it is the original Olympic sport.

History of athletics

Athletics is among the oldest organized sports. The first event at the ancient Olympics was the stadion, a sprint of about 190 meters, and recorded winners go back to 776 BCE. Other ancient events included longer races, races in armor and a pentathlon of the stadion, long jump, discus throw, javelin throw and wrestling.

The modern Olympic Games revived athletics in 1896 at Athens, and it has been on the programme of every Games since. Many of the 19th-century attempts to revive the Olympics consisted mostly of athletics events.

On 17 July 1912, after the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in Stockholm, delegates from 17 national federations founded the International Amateur Athletic Federation. It was set up to provide a world governing authority, a competition programme, standardized technical equipment and a list of official world records. The body became the International Association of Athletics Federations in 2001 and World Athletics in 2019.

Rules and events of athletics

Athletics events fall into groups: sprints, middle and long distance, hurdles, relays, jumps, throws, race walking, the marathon and combined events. The Olympic programme has been fairly standard since Los Angeles 1932.

Races on the track are run over laps of a 400-meter oval. The 800 meters is two laps, the 1,500 meters is three and three-quarter laps, the 5,000 meters is 12.5 laps and the 10,000 meters is 25 laps. In the sprints, eight runners each use a separate lane.

Hurdle races add obstacles. In the 110-meter hurdles the barriers are 107 centimeters high, the first is 13.72 meters from the start, the next nine stand 9.14 meters apart and the last is 14.02 meters from the finish. The 400-meter hurdles has ten hurdles, 91.4 centimeters high for men and 76.2 centimeters for women, and the 3,000-meter steeplechase includes 28 fixed hurdles and seven water jumps.

In race walking, one foot must always touch the ground, and the advancing leg must be straight from the moment of contact until the body passes over it. Three violations lead to disqualification.

The jumps are the long jump, triple jump, high jump and pole vault, and in the high jump and pole vault three consecutive failures eliminate the athlete. The throws are the shot put, discus, hammer and javelin, with six attempts each in a final and the best counting.

Combined events test all-round ability. Men compete in the ten-event decathlon and women in the seven-event heptathlon, each over two days, and the athlete with the most points wins.

Equipment and venues for athletics

The standard track is 400 meters around, and World Athletics publishes a Facilities Manual with marking plans for it. Field events are held inside the oval or beside it, in throwing circles, runways and landing areas.

Implements are specified by weight. The men’s javelin weighs at least 800 grams and is 2.6 to 2.7 meters long, while the women’s weighs 600 grams and is 2.2 to 2.3 meters long. The men’s discus weighs 2 kilograms and the women’s 1 kilogram. The men’s hammer and shot weigh 7.26 kilograms and the women’s 4 kilograms, and the hammer is thrown from a circle 2.135 meters across.

Governing bodies and major competitions

World Athletics governs the sport and maintains the official list of world records. It publishes Competition and Technical Rules in numbered editions, with a 2026 edition dated 1 January 2026 and amendments issued afterward.

The Olympic Games are the most publicized stage for athletics. The programme includes 4×100-meter and 4×400-meter relays for men and women, and Tokyo 2020 saw the first mixed 4×400-meter relay. Los Angeles 2028 will bring the first mixed 4×100-meter relay.

Race walking is changing too. At Paris 2024, men competed only in the 20-kilometer walk, and a mixed marathon race walk relay was held. For Los Angeles 2028, men’s and women’s race walks are planned at half-marathon distance.

Records and notable moments in athletics

Women first competed in athletics at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics and have taken part at every Games since. Today they have as many events as men, apart from the heptathlon in place of the decathlon and the 100-meter rather than 110-meter hurdles.

The United States leads the all-time Olympic table by a wide margin, with 358 gold medals as of 2024. Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi has 12 Olympic medals and American Carl Lewis 10, and each has nine golds. Ray Ewry of the United States and Usain Bolt of Jamaica have eight golds each, and Ewry has ten if the 1906 Intercalated Games are counted.

Among women, American runner Allyson Felix has seven golds and 11 medals. Elaine Thompson-Herah of Jamaica has five golds and a silver, and Merlene Ottey-Page of Jamaica has nine medals without a gold.

Olympedia counts 199 distinct athletics events across the history of the Games, which shows how much the programme has changed since the ancient stadion race.

Global participation in athletics

Athletics is rivaled only by football and volleyball as the sport practiced in the most countries, judging by the number of nations in each sport’s international federation. World Athletics counted 214 members in January 2026.

Success is spread across several regions. After the United States, the leading Olympic nations by gold medals are the Soviet Union with 64, Great Britain with 57, Finland with 48 and Kenya with 38, alongside East Germany, Jamaica, Germany, Italy, Ethiopia and Australia.

Track and field has also been part of the Youth Summer Olympics since the first edition in Singapore in 2010, with events for boys and girls. Only association football and volleyball rival it for the number of countries in which the sport is organized.

Editorially reviewed by Specialty Digest Editorial TeamLast reviewed November 4, 2026Researched and drafted with AI assistanceReport an issue