Contents
El athletics It is the “king of sports” of the Olympic Games and the one that best exemplifies the maxim “faster Higher Stronger” (faster, higher, stronger) with which the birth of modern sport is understood, back in the Olympic event in Athens in 1896.
Following this motto, athletics combines numerous events in the disciplines of racing, jumping and throwing, with some variations depending on whether they are held outdoors on its traditional 400-meter track, or on an indoor track.
The races include speed tests such as the 100, 200 or 400 meters (60 in the case of indoor competitions); middle background: 800 or 1.500 meters; and fondo: 5.000, 10.000 and the marathon and the athletic march in its different distances: 20 and 50 km for men, 10 and 20 km for women. In obstacle courses the tests are: 110 meter hurdles, 400 meter hurdles and 3.000 meter hurdles.
En jumps The long jumps, triple jump, high jump and pole vault are framed.
In the releases the tests are: weight, javelin, hammer and discus.
There are also two combined tests that bring together several of these tests: heptathlon, in the female case, and decathlon, in the male case.
Since 1983 the World Athletics Championships have been held, which has taken place every two years since 1991 and always in odd-numbered years, so as not to coincide with the Olympic event.
great athletes
Drawing up a list with the names of the great athletes who have marked an era and who have transcended beyond the tartan would be a marathon task, but some of the essentials in it are: Paavo Nurmi, a Finnish long-distance runner who triumphed in the 20s; Jesse Owens, a black American sprinter who won 4 Olympic golds at the 1936 Berlin Games; Fanny Blankers-Koen, legendary Dutch sprinter known as the flying Dutchwoman, won four gold medals at the 1948 Olympics; Emil Zatopek, the human locomotive, Czech long-distance runner that shone in the 40s and 50s, Abebe Bikila, legendary Ethiopian who won the Rome Olympics marathon running barefoot, Dick Fosbury, American jumper who changed the way of jumping high and whose style remains today, Bob Beamon, American jumper who held a stratospheric long jump record (8,90 meters) for more than 20 years; Sergey Bubka, Soviet peer, the first man to exceed 6 meters in height, Carl Lewis, the son of the wind, American sprinter who won 10 Olympic medals, Yelena Isinbayeva, Russian peer, the great queen of the test, winner of 3 consecutive Olympic Games in the 2000s; Usain Bolt, the great star of speed, holder of the world records of 100 and 200 meters.
Doping
The quest for glory has led to numerous doping cases throughout the history of athletics, images such as that of the Canadian B, winning with excessive sufficiency the 100 meters of the 1988 Seoul Olympics and his subsequent arrest are some of those that have marked the fight against cheats. Many cases have been detected and sanctioned, but the shadow of the doubt extends to some times with suspicious practices. The still current world records of athletes from the German Democratic Republic as Marita Koch, in the women’s 400 meters (1985), or that of the Czech Jamila Kratochvilova, in 800 meters (1983), are part of that shadow.
Curiosities
- The first historical reference to athletics dates back to 776 BC. C. in Greece, with a list of the winning athletes of a competition
- The word athletics comes from the Greek word “athletes”, which is defined as “that person who competes in a certain event for a prize”, this Greek word is related to the word “alethos” which is synonymous with the word “effort” .
- Athletics is one of the few sports practiced worldwide, either among amateurs or in competitions of all levels.
- Runners benefit when they compete in the northern hemisphere as they manage to set better times than in the southern hemisphere, as it is shown that most of the current records were achieved in that part of the planet.
- One of the theories that explains why runs are done counterclockwise has to do with the dominant leg (the strongest, usually the right) taking longer steps