hletics, also called track-and-field sports or track and field, a variety of competitions

in running, walking, jumping, and throwing events. Although these contests are called track
and field (or simply track) in the United States, they are generally designated as athletics
elsewhere. This article covers the history, the organization, and the administration of
the sports, the conduct of competitions, the rules and techniques of the individual events,
and some of the sports’ most prominent athletes.
Track-and-field athletics are the oldest forms of organized sport, having developed out of the
most basic human activities—running, walking, jumping, and throwing. Athletics have
become the most truly international of sports, with nearly every country in the world
engaging in some form of competition. Most nations send teams of men and women to the
quadrennial Olympic Games and to the official World Championships of track and field.
There also are several continental and intercontinental championship meets held, including
the European, Commonwealth, African, Pan-American, and Asian.
Within the broad title of athletics come as many as two dozen distinct events. These events,
generally held outdoors, make up a meet. The outdoor running events are held on a 400-
metre or 440-yard oval track, and field events (jumping and throwing) are held either inside
the track’s perimeter or in adjacent areas.
n many parts of the world, notably the United States, Canada, and Europe, the sport moves
indoors during the winter; because of limited space, some events are modified and several
are eliminated altogether.
Also within the general scope of track-and-field athletics come separate but related
competitions that are not contested on the track. Cross-country running competition is
carried out on various types of countryside and parkland. Marathons and races of other long
distances are run on roads, and the long-distance race walks are contested on measured
road courses. The rules followed by all organized competitions are established and enforced
by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and its member body from
each nation. The IAAF also ratifies all world records.

History

Origin and early development

There is little in the way of definitive records of athletics’ early days as organized sport. Egyptian and
Asian civilizations are known to have encouraged athletics many centuries before the Christian era.
Perhaps as early as 1829 BC, Ireland was the scene of the Lugnasad festival’s Tailteann Games,
involving various forms of track-and-field activity. The Olympic Games of Greece, traditionally
dated from 776 BC, continued through 11 centuries before ending about AD 393. These ancient
Olympics were strictly male affairs, as to both participants and spectators. Greek women were
reputed to have formed their own Heraea Games, which, like the Olympics, were held every four
years.
Athletics as practiced today was born and grew to maturity in England. The first mention of the sport
in England was recorded in 1154, when practice fields were first established in London. The sport
was banned by King Edward III in the 1300s but revived a century later by Henry VIII, reputed to be
an accomplished hammer thrower.
Modern development

The development of the modern sport, however, has come only since the early 19th century.
Organized amateur footraces were held in England as early as 1825, but it was from 1860
that athletics enjoyed its biggest surge to that date. In 1861 the West London Rowing Club
organized the first meet open to all amateurs, and in 1866 the Amateur Athletic Club (AAC)
was founded and conducted the first English championships. The emphasis in all these
meets was on competition for “gentlemen amateurs” who received no financial
compensation. In 1880 the AAC yielded governing power to the Amateur Athletic
Association (AAA).
The first meet in North America was held near Toronto in 1839, but it was the New York
Athletic Club, formed in the 1860s, that placed the sport on a solid footing in the United
States. The club held the world’s first indoor meet and helped promote the formation in 1879
of the National Association of Amateur Athletes of America (NAAAA) to conduct national
championships. Nine years later the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) took over as national
governing body, amid reports that the NAAAA was lax in enforcing amateurism.
Athletics was well established in many countries by the late 1800s, but not until the revival of
the Olympic Games in 1896 did the sport become truly international. Although begun
modestly, the Olympics provided the inspiration and standardizing influence that was to
spread interest in athletics worldwide. In 1912 the International Amateur Athletic Federation
(IAAF) was founded, and by the time that organization celebrated its 75th anniversary in
1987 it had more than 170 national members. Its rules applied only to men’s competition
until 1936, when the IAAF also became the governing body of women’s athletics.

Major international competitions before World War II included the Olympics, the British

Empire Games, and the European Championships, but after the war athletics experienced
its greatest period of growth, taking root especially in the developing countries. By the 1950s
world-class athletes from African, Asian, and Latin American nations were enjoying great
success at international meets.

Swimming, in recreation and sports, the propulsion of the body through water by combined
arm and leg motions and the natural flotation of the body. Swimming as an exercise is
popular as an all-around body developer and is particularly useful in therapy and as exercise
for physically handicapped persons. It is also taught for lifesaving purposes. For activities
that involve swimming, see also diving, lifesaving, surfing, synchronized
swimming, underwater diving, and water polo.

History
Archaeological and other evidence shows swimming to have been practiced as early as
2500 BCE in Egypt and thereafter in Assyrian, Greek, and Roman civilizations.
In Greece and Rome swimming was a part of martial training and was, with the alphabet,
also part of elementary education for males. In the Orient swimming dates back at least to
the 1st century BCE, there being some evidence of swimming races then in Japan. By the
17th century an imperial edict had made the teaching of swimming compulsory in the
schools. Organized swimming events were held in the 19th century before Japan was
opened to the Western world. Among the preliterate maritime peoples of the Pacific,
swimming was evidently learned by children about the time they walked, or even before.
Among the ancient Greeks there is note of occasional races, and a famous boxer swam as
part of his training. The Romans built swimming pools, distinct from their baths. In the 1st
century BCE the Roman Gaius Maecenas is said to have built the first heated swimming
pool.
The lack of swimming in Europe during the Middle Ages is explained by some authorities as
having been caused by a fear that swimming spread infection and caused epidemics. There
is some evidence of swimming at seashore resorts of Great Britain in the late 17th century,
evidently in conjunction with water therapy. Not until the 19th century, however, did the
popularity of swimming as both recreation and sport begin in earnest. When the first
swimming organization was formed there in 1837, London had six indoor pools with diving
boards. The first swimming championship was a 440-yard (400-metre) race, held in
Australia in 1846 and annually thereafter. The Metropolitan Swimming Clubs of London,
founded in 1869, ultimately became the Amateur Swimming Association, the governing body
of British amateur swimming. National swimming federations were formed in several
European countries from 1882 to 1889. In the United States swimming was first nationally
organized as a sport by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) on its founding in 1888.
The Fédération Internationale de Natation Amateur (FINA) was founded in 1909.

Competitive Swimming
Internationally, competitive swimming came into prominence with its inclusion in the
modern Olympic Games from their inception in 1896. Olympic events were originally only for
men, but women’s events were added in 1912. Before the formation of FINA, the Games
included some unusual events. In 1900, for instance, when the Games’ swimming events
were held on the Seine River in France, a 200-metre obstacle race involved climbing over a
pole and a line of boats and swimming under them. Such oddities disappeared after FINA
took charge. Under FINA regulations, for both Olympic and other world competition, race
lengths came increasingly to be measured in metres, and in 1969 world records for yard-
measured races were abolished. The kinds of strokes allowed were reduced to freestyle
(crawl), backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly. All four strokes were used in individual
medley races. Many nations have at one time or another dominated Olympic and world
competition, including Hungary, Denmark, Australia, Germany, France, Great Britain,
Canada, Japan, and the United States.

Instruction And Training

The earliest instruction programs were in Great Britain in the 19th century, both for sport and
for lifesaving. Those programs were copied in the rest of Europe. In the United States
swimming instruction for lifesaving purposes began under the auspices of the American Red
Cross in 1916. Instructional work done by the various branches of the armed forces during
both World Wars I and II was very effective in promoting swimming. Courses taught
by community organizations and schools, extending ultimately to very young infants,
became common.
The early practice of simply swimming as much as possible at every workout was replaced
by interval training and repeat training by the late 1950s. Interval training consists of a series
of swims of the same distance with controlled rest periods. In slow interval training, used
primarily to develop endurance, the rest period is always shorter than the time taken to swim
the prescribed distance. Fast interval training, used primarily to develop speed, permits rest
periods long enough to allow almost complete recovery of the heart and breathing rate.
The increased emphasis on international competition led to the growing availability of 50-
metre (164-foot) pools. Other adjuncts that improved both training and performance included
wave-killing gutters for pools, racing lane markers that also reduce turbulence, cameras for
underwater study of strokes, large clocks visible to swimmers, and electrically operated
touch and timing devices. Since 1972 all world records have been expressed in hundredths
of a second. Advances in swimsuit technology reached a head at the 2008 Olympic Games
in Beijing, where swimmers—wearing high-tech bodysuits that increased buoyancy and
decreased water resistance—broke 25 world records. After another round of record-
shattering times at the 2009 world championships, FINA banned such bodysuits, for fear
that they augmented a competitor’s true ability.
he earliest strokes to be used were the sidestroke and the breaststroke. The sidestroke was
originally used with both arms submerged. That practice was modified toward the end of the
19th century by bringing forward first one arm above the water, then the other, and then
each in turn. The sidestroke was supplanted in competitive swimming by the crawl (see
below) but is still used in lifesaving and recreational swimming. The body stays on its side
and the arms propel alternately. The leg motion used in sidestroke is called the scissors
kick, in which the legs open slowly, under leg backward, upper leg forward, both knees
slightly bent, and toes pointed. The scissoring action of the legs coming smartly together
after opening creates the forward propulsion of the kick.
The breaststroke is believed to be the oldest of strokes and is much used in lifesaving and
recreational swimming as well as in competitive swimming. The stroke is especially effective
in rough water. As early as the end of the 17th century, the stroke was described as
consisting of a wide pull of the arms combined with a symmetrical action of the legs and
simulating the movement of a swimming frog, hence the usual term frog kick. The stroke is
performed lying face down in the water, the arms always remaining underwater. The early
breaststroke featured a momentary glide at the completion of the frog kick. Later the
competitive breaststroke eliminated the glide. In the old breaststroke, breath was taken in at
the beginning of the arm stroke, but in the later style, breath was taken in near the end of
the arm pull.
The butterfly stroke, used only in competition, differs from the breaststroke in arm action. In
the butterfly the arms are brought forward above the water. The stroke was brought to the
attention of U.S. officials in 1933 during a race involving Henry Myers, who used the stroke.
He insisted that his stroke conformed to the rules of breaststroke as then defined. After a
period of controversy, the butterfly was recognized as a distinct competitive stroke in 1953.
The frog kick originally used was abandoned for a fishtail (dolphin) kick, depending only on
up-and-down movement of the legs. Later swimmers used two dolphin kicks to one arm pull.
Breathing is done in sprint competition by raising the head every second or third stroke.
The backstroke began to develop early in the 20th century. In that stroke, the swimmer’s
body position is supine, the body being held as flat and streamlined as possible. The arms
reach alternately above the head and enter the water directly in line with the shoulders, palm
outward with the little finger entering the water first. The arm is pulled back to the thigh.
There is a slight body roll. The kick was originally the frog kick, but it subsequently involved
up-and-down leg movements as in the crawl. The backstroke is a competition stroke, but it
is also used in recreational swimming as a rest from other strokes, frequently with minimum
arm motion and only enough kick to maintain forward motion.
The crawl, the stroke used in competitive freestyle swimming, has become the fastest of all
strokes. It is also the almost unanimous choice of stroke for covering any considerable
distance. The stroke was in use in the Pacific at the end of the 19th century and was taken
up by the Australian swimmer Henry Wickham about 1893. The brothers Syd and Charles
Cavill of Australia popularized the stroke in Europe in 1902 and in the United States in 1903.
The crawl was like the old sidestroke in its arm action, but it had a fluttering up-and-down
leg action performed twice for each arm stroke. Early American imitators added an extra pair
of leg actions, and later as many as six kicks were used. The kicks also varied in kind. In the
crawl, the body lies prone, flat on the surface of the water, with the legs kept slightly under
the water. The arms move alternately, timed so that one will start pulling just before the
other has finished its pull, thus making propulsion continuous. Breathing is done by turning
the head to either side during recovery of the arm from that side. Since 1896 the crawl has
been used in more races than any other stroke.
Gymnastics, the performance of systematic exercises—often with the use of rings, bars, and other
apparatus—either as a competitive sport or to improve strength, agility, coordination, and physical
conditioning.

History
The term gymnastics, derived from a Greek word meaning “to exercise naked,” applied in ancient
Greece to all exercises practiced in the gymnasium, the place where male athletes did indeed exercise
unclothed. Many of these exercises came to be included in the Olympic Games, until the
abandonment of the Games in AD 393. Some of the competitions grouped under this ancient
definition of gymnastics later became separate sports such as athletics (track and field), wrestling,
and boxing.
Of the modern events currently considered to be gymnastics, only tumbling and a primitive form
of vaulting were known in the ancient world. For instance, Egyptian hieroglyphs show variations of
backbends and other stunts being performed with a partner, while a well-known fresco from Crete at
the palace at Knossos shows a leaper performing what is either a cartwheel or handspring over a
charging bull. Tumbling was an art form in ancient China as well. Stone engravings found in
Shandong province that date to the Han period (206 BC–AD 220) portray acrobatics being performed.
tumbling continued in the Middle Ages in Europe, where it was practiced by traveling
troupes of thespians, dancers, acrobats, and jugglers. The activity was first described in the
West in a book published in the 15th century by Archange Tuccaro, Trois dialogues du Sr.
Archange Tuccaro (the book contains three essays on jumping and tumbling). Tumbling
seems to be an activity that evolved in various forms in many cultures with little cross-
cultural influence. For instance, the hoop-diving illustrated in Tuccaro’s book looks very
similar to a type of tumbling seen in ancient China. Tumbling and acrobatics of all kinds
were eventually incorporated into the circus, and it was circus acrobats who first used
primitive trampolines.
ean-Jacques Rousseau’s novel Émile; ou, de l’éducation (1762; Emile; or, On Education) is credited
by historians as the catalyst of educational reform in Europe that combined both the physical
and cognitive training of children. Rousseau’s work inspired educational reformers in Germany, who
opened schools known as Philanthropinum in the late 1700s that featured a wide variety of outdoor
activities, including gymnastics; children from all economic strata were accepted. The “grandfather”
of modern gymnastics, Johann Christoph Friedrich Guts Muths (1759–1839), was a leading teacher at
the Philanthropinist school in Schnepfenthal. In his seminal work, Gymnastik für die
Jugend(1793; Gymnastics for Youth), Guts Muths envisioned two main divisions of gymnastics:
natural gymnastics and artificial gymnastics. These two divisions may be thought of as utilitarian and
nonutilitarian gymnastics. The former disciplines emphasize the health of the body, similar to the
exercises developed in Sweden and Denmark under Per Henrik Ling (1776–1839) and Neils Bukh
(1880–1950), respectively. Modern aerobics also falls into this category; indeed, sports aerobics has
recently been added to the disciplines sponsored by the International Gymnastics Federation. In
contrast, nonutilitarian gymnastics is characterized by modern artistic gymnastics, the maneuvers of
which are geared to beauty and not function. For example, in feudal Europe young men were taught
to mount and dismount a horse, useful knowledge during a time when armies rode. Modern “horse”
work in artistic gymnastics has evolved to a point where there is no practical connection between
gymnastic maneuvers on a horse and horsemanship. Only the language of riding remains, with the
terms “mount” and “dismount” still being used in gymnastics.
The prime developer of natural gymnastics was Per Henrik Ling. In 1813 Ling founded a teacher-
training centre, the Royal Gymnastics Central Institute, in Stockholm. Ling devised and taught a
system of gymnastic exercises designed to produce medical benefits for the athlete. Calisthenics are
attributed to him, including free calisthenics—that is, exercises without the use of hand apparatus
such as clubs, wands, and dumbbells. Although Ling did not promote competition, free calisthenics
have evolved into the competitive sport now known as floor exercise.
The acknowledged “father” of gymnastics, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, founder of
the Turnverein movement, is credited with the rapid spread of gymnastics throughout the world.
Gymnastic competition can be traced to the outdoor playground (Turnplatz) Jahn opened in a field
known as the “Hasenheide” (rabbit field) on the outskirts of Berlin. Ernst Eiselen, Jahn’s assistant and
the coauthor of Die Deutsche Turnkunst (1816; The German Gymnastic Art), carefully noted and
explained the various exercises developed on the playground. The pommel horse was used for leg-
swinging exercises and for vaulting. Jahn invented the parallel bars to increase the upper-body
strength of his students, and immense towers were erected to test their courage. Balance
beams, horizontal bars, climbing ropes, and climbing poles were also found at the Turnplatz.
Primitive pole vaulting was practiced along with other athletic games. The wide variety of
challenging apparatus found on the playground attracted young men who were then, in addition,
indoctrinated with Jahn’s dream of German unification and his ideas on the defense of the fatherland
and ridding Prussia of French influence.
The Prussians and leaders from surrounding countries became wary of nationalist sentiments, and
Jahn and his followers were viewed with suspicion after the defeat of Napoleon in 1813. By 1815
student organizations such as the Burschenschaft (“Youth Branch”) were in favour of adopting
a constitutional form of government, arming the citizenry, and instituting greater civil freedoms. In
1819, after the murder of the German playwright August von Kotzebue by a Burschenschaft gymnast,
the Prussian king Frederick William III closed approximately 100 gymnastics fields and centres in
Prussia. Other Germanic states followed suit. Jahn was arrested, jailed as a democratic demagogue,
and placed under house arrest for the next five years. He was eventually acquitted but
was admonished to relocate far from Berlin to a city or town with neither institutions of higher
learning or gymnasia. He was awarded a yearly stipend and settled in Freiburg. The time was a period
of personal tragedy for Jahn; two of his three children died while he was under house arrest, and his
wife died shortly thereafter. Three of his close followers, Karl Beck, Karl Follen, and Franz Lieber,
fearing arrest, fled to North America, bringing gymnastics with them. The Turners remaining in
Prussia went underground until the ban on gymnastics was lifted by King Frederick William IV in
1842.
The first German gymnastic festival (Turnfest) was held in Coburg in 1860. The festival
attracted affiliated Turnverein clubs and marked the beginning of international competition, as the
growing family of Turners outside of Germany were invited to participate. Americans had been
introduced to gymnastics by followers of Jahn in the late 1820s, but not until 1848, when large
numbers of Germans immigrated, did transplanted Turnverein members organize clubs and establish
a national union of Turner societies. (A similar movement, the Sokol, originated and spread in
Bohemia and was also transported to the United States.) By 1861 American Turners and Turners from
Germanic regions bordering Prussia attended the second Turnfest in Berlin. By the time of the first
modern Olympics in Athens in 1896, eight Turnfests had taken place in Germany with the
participation of a growing number of countries.
In 1881 the Fédération Internationale Gymnastique (FIG) was founded to supervise international
competition. The 1896 Olympic Games fostered interest in gymnastics, and the FIG World
Championships in gymnastics were organized for men in 1903, for women in 1934.
The 1896 Olympic Games marked the advent of true international, open competition in gymnastics.
The Games featured typical German, or “heavy apparatus,” events and rope climbing. Gymnastics
competitions were not standardized nor free of track-and-field events until the 1928 Olympics, when
five of the six events presently held in Olympic gymnastics were contested—pommel horse, rings,
vaulting, parallel bars, and horizontal bar, with both compulsory and optional routines required.
Women first competed in the Olympics in 1928 in events similar to those of the men except for the
addition of the balance beam. Floor exercise events were added in 1932.

Boxing is a combat sport in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves, throw punches at each
other for a predetermined amount of time in a boxing ring. Amateur boxing is both an Olympic and
Commonwealth Games sport and is a common fixture in most international games—it also has its own
World Championships. Wikipedia
Olympic sport: 688 BC (Ancient Greece); 1904 (modern)
Boxing is a combat sport in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves, throw punches at each other for a
predetermined amount of time in a boxing ring.
Amateur boxing is both an Olympic and Commonwealth Games sport and is a common fixture in most international
games—it also has its own World Championships. Boxing is overseen by a referee over a series of one- to three-
minute intervals called rounds.
The result is decided when an opponent is deemed incapable to continue by a referee, is disqualified for breaking a
rule, or resigns by throwing in a towel. If a fight completes all of its allocated rounds, the victor is determined by judges'
scorecards at the end of the contest. In the event that both fighters gain equal scores from the judges, professional
bouts are considered a draw. In Olympic boxing, because a winner must be declared, judges award the content to one
fighter on technical criteria.
While humans have fought in hand-to-hand combat since the dawn of human history, the earliest evidence of fist-
fighting sportingcontests date back to the ancient Near East in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC.[2] The earliest evidence of
boxing rules date back to Ancient Greece, where boxing was established as an Olympic game in 688 BC.[2] Boxing
evolved from 16th- and 18th-century prizefights, largely in Great Britain, to the forerunner of modern boxing in the mid-
19th century with the 1867 introduction of the Marquess of Queensberry Rules
History

Ancient history

See also: Ancient Greek boxing

A painting of Minoan youths boxing, from an Akrotiri fresco circa 1650 BC. This is the earliest documented use of boxing
gloves.

A boxing scene depicted on a Panathenaic amphora from Ancient Greece, circa 336 BC, British Museum

The earliest known depiction of boxing comes from a Sumerian relief in Iraq from the 3rd millennium BC.[2] Later
depictions from the 2nd millennium BC are found in reliefs from the Mesopotamian nations of Assyria and Babylonia, and
in Hittite art from Asia Minor.[citation needed] A relief sculpture from Egyptian Thebes (c. 1350 BC) shows both boxers and
spectators.[2] These early Middle-Eastern and Egyptian depictions showed contests where fighters were either bare-fisted
or had a band supporting the wrist.[2] The earliest evidence of fist fighting with the use of gloves can be found on Minoan
Crete (c. 1500–1400 BC).[2]

Various types of boxing existed in ancient India. The earliest references to musti-yuddha come from classical Vedic epics
such as the Ramayana and Rig Veda. The Mahabharata describes two combatants boxing with clenched fists and fighting
with kicks, finger strikes, knee strikes and headbutts.[3] Duels (niyuddham) were often fought to the death.[citation
needed] During the period of the Western Satraps, the ruler Rudradaman - in addition to being well-versed in "the great
sciences" which included Indian classical music, Sanskrit grammar, and logic - was said to be an excellent horseman,
charioteer, elephant rider, swordsman and boxer.[4] The Gurbilas Shemi, an 18th-century Sikh text, gives numerous
references to musti-yuddha.

In Ancient Greece boxing was a well developed sport and enjoyed consistent popularity. In Olympic terms, it was first
introduced in the 23rd Olympiad, 688 BC. The boxers would wind leather thongs around their hands in order to protect
them. There were no rounds and boxers fought until one of them acknowledged defeat or could not continue. Weight
categories were not used, which meant heavyweights had a tendency to dominate. The style of boxing practiced typically
featured an advanced left leg stance, with the left arm semi-extended as a guard, in addition to being used for striking, and
with the right arm drawn back ready to strike. It was the head of the opponent which was primarily targeted, and there is
little evidence to suggest that targeting the body was common.[5]

Boxing was a popular spectator sport in Ancient Rome.[6] In order for the fighters to protect themselves against their
opponents they wrapped leather thongs around their fists. Eventually harder leather was used and the thong soon became
a weapon. The Romans even introduced metal studs to the thongs to make the cestus. Fighting events were held at Roman
Amphitheatres. The Roman form of boxing was often a fight until death to please the spectators who gathered at such
events. However, especially in later times, purchased slaves and trained combat performers were valuable commodities,
and their lives were not given up without due consideration. Often slaves were used against one another in a circle marked
on the floor. This is where the term ring came from. In AD 393, during the Roman gladiator period, boxing was abolished
due to excessive brutality. It was not until the late 16th century that boxing re-surfaced in London.[