Introduction
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...)
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Selected article
The European Athletic Association (more commonly known as European Athletics) is the governing body for athletics in Europe. It is one of the six Area Associations of the world's athletics governing body World Athletics. European Athletics has 51 members and is headquartered in Lausanne.
Originally created in 1932 as a European Committee, it was made into an independent body during the Bucharest conference of 1969. The first European Athletics congress took place in Paris on 6–8 October 1970, with Dutchman Adriaan Paulen elected as its first president. From a volunteer-led organization based in the acting Secretary's home country, European Athletics has developed into a professional organization with a permanent base in Switzerland.
European Athletics runs and regulates several championships and meetings across Europe – both indoor and outdoor. (Full article...)
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Athlete birthdays
22 July:
- Anna Chicherova, Russian high jumper
- Yevgeniya Kolodko, Russian shot putter
- António Leitão, Portuguese distance runner
- Mihaela Peneș, Romanian javelin thrower
- Miloslava Rezková, Czechoslovakian high jumper
- Lasse Virén, Finnish distance runner
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
Related portals
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Selected biography
Shambel Abebe Bikila (Amharic: ሻምበል አበበ ቢቂላ; August 7, 1932 – October 25, 1973) was an Ethiopian marathon runner who was a back-to-back Olympic marathon champion. He was the first Ethiopian Olympic gold medalist, winning his first gold medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome while running barefoot. At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, he won his second gold medal, making him the first athlete to successfully defend an Olympic marathon title. In both victories, he ran in world record time.
Born in Shewa, Abebe moved to Addis Ababa around 1952 and joined the 5th Infantry Regiment of the Ethiopian Imperial Guard, an elite infantry division that safeguarded the emperor of Ethiopia. Abebe served in the Kagnew Battalion during the Korean War.
Enlisting as a soldier before his athletic career, he rose to the rank of shambel (captain). Abebe participated in a total of sixteen marathons. He placed second on his first marathon in Addis Ababa, won twelve other races, and finished fifth in the 1963 Boston Marathon. In July 1967, he sustained the first of several sports-related leg injuries that prevented him from finishing his last two marathons. Abebe was a pioneer in long-distance running. Mamo Wolde, Juma Ikangaa, Tegla Loroupe, Paul Tergat, and Haile Gebrselassie—all recipients of the New York Road Runners' Abebe Bikila Award—are a few of the athletes who have followed in his footsteps to establish East Africa as a force in long-distance running.
On March 22, 1969, Abebe was paralysed due to a car accident. He regained some upper-body mobility, but he never walked again. While he was receiving medical treatment in England, Abebe competed in archery and table tennis at the 1970 Stoke Mandeville Games in London. Those games were an early predecessor of the Paralympic Games. He competed in both sports at a 1971 competition for disabled people in Norway and won its cross-country sleigh-riding event. Abebe died at age 41 in 1973 of a cerebral haemorrhage related to his accident four years earlier. He received a state funeral, and Emperor Haile Selassie declared a national day of mourning. Many schools, venues, and events, including Abebe Bikila Stadium in Addis Ababa, are named after him. He is the subject of biographies and films documenting his athletic career, and he is often featured in publications about the marathon and the Olympics. (Full article...)
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World records
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.
Event | 1st edition | Kind of competition | Can participate |
---|---|---|---|
Olympic Games | 1896 | World games | Worldwide |
World Championships | 1983 | World championships | |
World Indoor Championships | 1985 | ||
European Championships | 1934 | Continental championships | Europe |
European Indoor Championships | 1966 | ||
South American Championships | 1919 | South America | |
Asian Championships | 1973 | Asia | |
African Championships | 1979 | Africa | |
Ocenian Championships | 1990 | Oceania |
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)
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