The History Of Track And Field.

The ancient Olympic Games began in the year 776 BC, when Koroibos, a cook from the nearby city of Elis,
won the stadium race, a foot race 600 feet long. According to some literary traditions, this was the only
athletic event of the games for the first 13 Olympic festivals.

Other evidence, both literary and archaeological, suggests that the games may have existed at Olympia
much earlier than this date, perhaps as early as the 10th or 9th century BC. A series of bronze tripods have
been found at Olympia, some of which appear to be dated at about the 9th century BC, and it has also been
suggested that these tripods may in fact be prizes for some of the early events at Olympia.

The marathon was not an event of the ancient Olympic games. The marathon is a modern event that was
first introduced in the Modern Olympic Games of 1896 in Athens, a race from Marathon - northeast of Athens
- to the Olympic Stadium, a distance of 42.195 kilometers. The race commemorates the run of Pheidippides,
an ancient "day-runner" who carried the news of the Persian landing at Marathon of 490 BC to Sparta (a
distance of 149 miles) in order to enlist help for the battle. According to the fifth century BC ancient Greek
historian Herodotus, Pheidippides delivered the news to the Spartans the next day. The distance of the
modern marathon was standardized as 26 miles 385 yards or 42,195 kilometers in 1908 when the Olympic
Games were held in London. The distance was the exact measurement between Windsor Castle, the start of
the race, and the finish line inside White City Stadium

From 776 BC, the Games were held in Olympia every four years for almost 12 centuries. Additional athletic
events were gradually added until, by the 5th century BC, the religious festival consisted of a five-day
program. The athletic events included: three foot races (stadion, diaulos, and dolichos) as well as the
pentathlon (five contests: discus, javelin, long jump, wrestling, and foot race), pugme (boxing), pale
(wrestling), pankration, and the hoplitodromos. Additional events, both equestrian and for humans, were
added throughout the course of the history of the Olympic Games. Equestrian events, held in the
hippodromos, were an important part of the athletic program of the ancient Olympic Games and by the 5th
century BC included the tethrippon and the keles.

Track and field athletics in the United States dates from the 1860s. The Intercollegiate Association of
Amateur Athletes of America, the nation's first national athletic group, held the first collegiate races in 1873,
and in 1888 the Amateur Athletic Union (which governed the sport for nearly a century) held its first
championships. As track and field developed as a modern sport, a major issue for all athletes was their
status as amateurs. For many years track and field was considered a purely amateur sport and athletes
could not accept training money or cash prizes if charged with professionalism, athletes could be banned
from competition for life. In 1913 American Jim Thorpe was stripped of his 1912 Olympic victories in the
decathlon and pentathlon and banned from further competition after it was learned he had played
semiprofessional baseball. (In 1982 the International Olympic Committee [IOC] posthumously restored both
Thorpe’s amateur status and his two Olympic medals.)Beginning in the 1920s track and field’s scope
widened. The first NCAA national championships were held for men in 1921, and women’s track and field
became part of the Olympic Games in 1928. In 1952 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) sent its
first Olympic team ever to the Summer Games in Helsinki, Finland, where the squad captured several track-
and-field medals. Over the next 30 years the U.S. and Soviet teams battled in one of the sport’s longest and
most competitive rivalries.Women's track struggled for widespread acceptance until the 1970s, when track
and field as a whole enjoyed a boom in popularity. During that time the U.S.-based International Track
Association (ITA) organized a professional track circuit. The venture, although popular among fans, went
bankrupt after several years. Few athletes wanted to participate in ITA competitions because athletes were
actually receiving larger illegal payments for appearing at amateur meets than legitimate professionals were
making on the new circuit. Many athletes also turned away from ITA competition because it disqualified them
from participating in future Olympic Games.

The Athletics Congress now regulates the sport in the United States; the International Amateur Athletics
Federation (IAAF) sanctions international competition. Track and field has been the centerpiece of the
summer Olympic games since their revival in 1896. International professional running, initiated in the 1970s,
has had limited success.