Athletics has been contested at every Summer Olympics since the birth of the modern Olympic movement at Athens 1896 Summer Olympic Games. The athletics program traces its earliest roots to events used in the ancient Greek Olympics. The modern program includes track and field events, road running events, and race walking events. Cross country running was also on the program in earlier editions but it was dropped after the 1924 Summer Olympics.
The United States’ Olympic track and field team has enjoyed its fair share of dominance over the storied history of the Olympic Games. The U.S. sprinter Carl Lewis won nine gold medals during his career, tied with Finnish distance runner Paavo Nurmi for most all time in track and field.
Jamaica’s Usain Bolt is next on the list with eight gold medals. Bolt ran nine races and won nine gold medals, but his 2008 4x100m relay gold was stripped from him after one of Bolt’s teammates, Nesta Carter, tested positive for a banned substance. The U.S. sprinter Allyson Felix has the most gold medals of any woman in Olympic history with six.
Sri Lanka’s Success
Sri Lanka was successful in reaching the Olympic podium twice. Susanthika Jayasinghe won the Olympic silver medal in 200m at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, becoming the second Sri Lankan to win an Olympic medal. Prior to her Duncan White secured the silver medal in 400m Hurdles in London 1948 Olympic Games. Duncan’s medal was significant as he won it in the first Olympics Sri Lanka participated.
Susanthika became the first Asian woman to win an Olympic medal in a sprint event. Her silver medal at Sydney stood as the only Olympic medal for a South Asian in athletics for 21 years. She represented Sri Lanka at the Olympics on four occasions in 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008. She was the flag-bearer at the opening of 2004 as well as at the opening and closing ceremonies of 2008 Summer Olympics.
Athletics at Paris 2024
Athletics at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris are scheduled to run from Thursday, August 1 to Sunday, August 11, 2024, featuring a total of 48 medal events across three distinct sets: track and field, road running, and race-walking.
A total of 1,810 competitors are expected to take part. The competition will feature an identical number of medal events for men and women, the first instance in Olympic history. The Marathon Race Walking Mixed Relay through a Marathon course will contest for the first time at these Games, replacing the men’s 50 km race walk in the quest for gender equality.
Another significant change to the athletics program is the introduction of repechageround. This is the new format that has been introduced for all individual track events from 200m to 1500m, including hurdles events (110m for men, 100m for women, and 400m for both). It gives vast opportunities for the runners to have a second chance of entering the semi-final phase.
It is an innovation that will make its debut at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and that will change the qualification system for semifinals. The new format covers a total of six different distances in both men’s and women’s races, which will include four rounds instead of the usual three.
Track and field events will be staged at the iconic Stade de France, with the race walks contested at Pont d’Iena. The marathon races begin at the Hotel de Ville (city hall) and will end in Les Invalides, witnessing the runners traverse many of the city’s most iconic sites and Olympic venues throughout the route.
This traditional marathon course also sets a particularly tough profile with an overall elevation gain or loss of 438 m. The route, specially designed for the Paris 2024 Games and approved by World Athletics, is unique, demanding, and technical. Paris 2024 unveils the routes for the Olympic marathon and the two races – a 42.195 km course and a 10 km course – open to the general public as part of the mass event running.
Road events (marathons and race-walks) will hold the races in the morning session of the athletics program schedule, with all track, field, and combined events staging their finals in the evening session for the first time since London 2012.
In its four-decade-long Olympic history, the women’s marathon will occur on the last day of the athletics program for the first time, with the men’s race scheduled a day before. According to Tony Estanguet, a triple Olympic slalom canoeing champion and the president of Paris 2024 organizing committee, “We wanted to reverse the order in an ambition to more gender equality and bring women to the fore for the first time so the women’s marathon will enjoy major visibility on August 11, to cap off the athletics program.”
Qualification for Paris 2024
Individual events: At the end of the 2022 season, World Athletics established a qualification system for athletics competition at the 2024 Summer Olympics. Similar to the previous edition, the qualification system is set on a dual pathway, where the initial half of the total quota (about fifty percent) will likely be distributed to the athletes through entry standards approved by the World Athletics council, with the remainder relying on the world ranking list within the qualifying period.
Each country can enter a maximum of three athletes for each individual event on the Paris 2024 athletics program. The qualification period for all track and field events (except the 10,000 metres, heptathlon, and decathlon) runs from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024.
Relay teams: Each relay features sixteen teams from their respective NOCs. The top fourteen teams based on their results achieved at the 2024 World Athletics Relays in Nassau, Bahamas and the top two teams outside the key qualifier according to the World Athletics performance list for relays within the qualification period (December 31, 2022 to June 30, 2024).
Marathon Race Walking Mixed Relay teams: This event, covering a distance of marathon (42.195 km), features twenty-five pairs from their respective NOCs. The top twenty-two teams based on their results achieved at the 2024 World Athletics Race Walking Team Championships. Besides, the top three teams outside the key qualifier through the World Athletics Race Walk rankings based on the aggregate scores of both a male and a female athlete within the qualification period (December 31, 2022 to June 30, 2024).
10,000m, Road, and Combined events: The qualification period for the marathon runs from November 1, 2022 to April 30, 2024 and for the 10,000m, combined events (men’s decathlon and women’s heptathlon) and race-walking from December 31, 2022 to June 30, 2024.
In the marathon races, any runner ranked higher than the sixty-fifth-place athlete on the filtered Quota Place “Road to Paris” list on January 30, 2024, will be deemed eligible for immediate selection to his or her respective national team at the Games. Beyond the deadline, the remaining twenty percent of the total quota will be determined by the same dual pathway qualification criteria outlined above without displacing any qualified athletes on the set date.
Athletics at the 2020 Olympics
In Tokyo 2020, athletics were held during the last ten days of the Games, from July 30 to August 8, 2021, at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, Japan. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the games were postponed from 2020 to 2021. A total of 48 events were held, one more than in 2016, with the addition of a mixed relay event.
Road events (marathons and race-walks) took place at Odori Park in Sapporo, but the National Stadium, which was known as the Olympic Stadium during the games, completely rebuilt and inaugurated in 2019, was the venue of all the track and field events.
Italian company Mondo equipped the stadium with a new track, a Mondo track WS surface which was given a seal of approval with a World Athletics “Class 1 Certificate” in December 2019. The Mondo track WS surface in Tokyo’s National Stadium is an better and updated version of the track that was provided and installed for the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics.
Apart from the race walks and marathon, nine track and field events held finals in the morning session to ensure that they receive maximum visibility for the sport across all time zones. The plans were made official on November 1, 2019 after Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike accepted the IOC’s decision, despite her belief that the events should have remained in Tokyo.
The 2020 athletics qualifying system for individual events was fundamentally different from previous versions. Instead of being only based on set qualifying standards, the new qualifying system was also based on IAAF World Rankings.
On June 2, 2021, Sebastian Coe, president of World Athletics, declared that “our tracking suggests that about 70 percent of athletes in most events will qualify by entry standard. This is above the 50 percent rate we aimed for in devising the system, but we believe this is due to the extended qualifying period created after the postponement of the Olympic Games from 2020 to 2021.”
World Records in Tokyo 2020
Three world records and 12 Olympic records were set. 28 continental (area) records were set along with 151 national ones.Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone set a world record in women’s 400m hurdles. Yulimar Rojas and Karsten Warholm set world records in the women’s triple jump and men’s 400 m hurdles respectively.
According to the World Athletics, their performance ranking system concludes that the 2020 Olympic Games were the “highest quality major event in history.”A total of 144 medals were awarded in athletics at Tokyo 2020 and included 49 gold, 47 silver and 48 bronze medals. The United States spearheaded the medals table with 26 medals which included 7 gold, 12 silver and 7 bronze medals. In second place was Italy with just 5 gold medals. Kenya secured the third position with 4 gold, 4 silver and 2 bronze medals.
Poland and Jamaica secured 4 golds each as well. The Netherlands, Canada, China, Uganda, Norway, Sweden and Bahamas won 2 gold medals each. These countries were followed by Germany, Ethiopia, Portugal, ROC, Belgium, Greece, India, Morocco, Puerto Rico, Qatar and Venezuela with a gold medal each. Additional 10 countries managed to secure silver medals whilst another 10 nations accounted for at least a bronze medal.
The Placing table assigns points to the top eight athletes in the final, with eight points to first place, seven to second place, and so on until one point for eighth place. Teams or athletes that did not finish or were disqualified do not receive points.
70 of the participating countries earned points for securing first to eighth places in the 48 events. The United States led with 264 points whilst Jamaica and Kenya came second and third with 106 and 104points respectively.
Athletics at the Summer Olympics
Athletics has been contested at every Summer Olympics since the birth of the modern Olympic movement at the 1896 Summer Olympics. The athletics program traces its earliest roots to events used in the ancient Greek Olympics. The modern program includes track and field events, road running events, and race walking events. Cross country running was also on the program in earlier editions but it was dropped after the 1924 Summer Olympics.
Of the 32 editions from 1896 to 2020, the games did not take place in 1916, 1940 and 1944 due to war. The first edition comprised of only 12 events and the final edition included the highest of 48 events. Except for 3 occasions (1972 – Soviet Union, 1976 – East Germany and 1980 – Soviet Union), the United States have emerged the best nation on 26 occasions.
The events contested have varied widely. From 1900 to 1920, tug of war was considered to be part of the Olympic athletics programme, although the sports of tug of war and athletics are now considered distinct.
Men’s events: No new events have been added to the men’s athletics programme since the 1952 addition of the short race-walk. The roster of events has not changed since then, with the exception of the omission of the long race-walk in 1976 (the IAAF held a 50 km walk World Championships that year instead and as a result the event was restored in 1980). The long race-walk is the only event currently held for men but not included on the women’s programme, with the exception of women taking part in the heptathlon rather than the decathlon and the 100 metres hurdles rather than the 110m hurdles. The last women’s event added to the roster was the 3000m steeplechase in 2008.
A total of 52 different events have been held in the men’s competition. The current list comprises 23 events. Many of the discontinued events were similar to modern ones but at different lengths, especially in the steeple chasing, hurdling, and race-walking disciplines. Team racing events have been eliminated after appearing in six early editions of the Games.
The athletic triathlon (an unusual event, held only once and featuring gymnasts competing in the long jump, shot put, and 100m dash) and pentathlon multi-discipline events were phased out in favor of the decathlon, and the medley relay replaced with even-leg relays. Standing jump competitions are no longer held, nor are the various modified throwing events which were experimented with in 1908 and 1912. Cross country running was on the program from 1912 to 1924 and is the most prominent form of athletics not to feature at the Olympics.
Women’s events: Women’s competition in athletics began at the 1928 Summer Olympics
Mixed events: The mixed event, a 4 x 400 meters relay, first made an appearance at the 2020 Summer Olympics.[2] The event includes teams of four athletes, two men and two women who are allowed to run in any order decided by the team. Paris 2024 will feature one more mixed team event.
Nations at Athletics
Nearly every nation that has competed at the Olympics has entered the athletics competition, except Bhutan. Sri Lanka took part in 1948 (3 athletes), 1952 (1 athlete), 1956 (1), 1960 (1), 1964 (1), 1968 (1), 1972 (3), 1976 (none), 1980 (4), 1984 (none), 1988(2), 1992 (7), 1996 (6), 2000 (13), 2004 (4), 2008 (2), 2012 (2), 2016 (3) and 2020 (2).
Medal Table of Athletics
The data of medals considering stripped medals and reallocated medals was updated in May 2023. A total of 103 countries have secured at least one medal in athletics. The United States with 827 medals (344 gold, 269 silver and 214 bronze medals) dominate the overall medals table. In second position is the Soviet Union with 193 medals (64 gold, 55 silver and 74 bronze medals). In the third place is the Great Britain with 210 medals (55 gold, 83 silver and 72 bronze medals). Sri Lanka is sharing the 79th position with two silver medals.
