Factbox on athletics

Factbox on athletics at the August 8-24 Beijing Olympics:

HISTORY

Athletics, derived from the Greek world "athlos" meaning battle or struggle, is the purest form of sport and as old as humanity itself.

Elemental competitions in running, jumping and throwing have been traced in the ancient world to Greece and Ireland. Classic Greek literature describes races in Hellas more than 1,000 years before the Christian era and the ancient Olympics were first staged in Olympia in the north-western Peloponnese. Dates vary for the first Games but the first recorded winner was Coroebus in 884 BC. Coroebus won the stadion, a race of approximately 200 metres and the only event on the early programme.

The Greeks sprinted, long jumped and threw the discus and the javelin. After Roman emperor Theodosius decreed the end of the ancient Games in AD 393, athletics survived mostly in European military tournaments until the late 19th century when the foundations of the modern sport were laid in Victorian England.

By the time of the 1896 Athens Games, athletics was recognisably the sport it remains today with running as its centre. It is the main sport of the modern Olympics.

The sprint events, where pure speed prevails, are the 100, 200 and 400 metres (one lap of the track). The middle distances, a blend of speed and stamina, are the 800 and 1,500 metres and the long distances, mostly stamina, comprise the 5,000 and 10,000. The longest event is the 42.195-km marathon, a conscious throwback to ancient Greece and the legend of Phidippides who ran from Marathon to Athens to proclaim the victory of the Athenians over the Persians before promptly dropping dead.

Field events, staged inside the oval track, include high, long and triple jumps and the pole vault. Throwing events include the javelin, discus, shot put and discus. Multi-events, evoking the Greek ideal of the all-round athlete, are the decathlon (10 events) for men and the heptathlon (seven) for women.

There are 24 men's events and 23 women's, the most in any sport at these Olympics.