Not until the s, however, did the sport flourish. In the first English championships were held by the newly formed Amateur Athletic Club, which opened the competition to all "gentlemen amateurs" specifically, athletes who received no financial compensation for their efforts.
This code has lasted to the present day and is the basis of the rules governing the sport. The Amateur Athletic Club gave way to the Amateur Athletic Association in , which has conducted the annual national championships since that date. Although meets were held on the North American continent as early as , track and field first gained popularity in the late s, after the formation of the New York Athletic Club in In the first modern Olympic Games were staged.
Although initially of limited appeal, the Olympics captured the imagination of athletes and grew steadily, making track and field an international sport for the first time. The IAAF was charged with establishing standard rules for the sport, approving world records, and ensuring that the amateur code was adhered to; it continues to carry out these duties today.
The participation of women in track and field is a relatively recent development. In representatives from six countries formed an athletic federation for women, which merged with the IAAF in Participation by women has grown rapidly in many countries in recent years, particularly in the United States, where many schools have added women's track and field to their athletic programs.
Rules and Scoring All races are started by the firing of a gun by an official at the starting line. For races up to and including one lap of an outdoor track, the runners must stay for the entire distance within lanes marked on the track.
There may be six to eight lanes, with each lane usually measuring 1. The winner in each race is the runner whose torso first breaks the vertical plane of the finish line. Races are timed either by mechanical watches or by more sophisticated, electronic photo-timers that can measure finishes to the hundredth of a second.
Sometimes, owing to the number of contestants in a competition, qualifying rounds, or heats, are held to narrow the contestants down to the fastest runners. Athletes in the field events also have qualifying rounds. In the horizontal jumps and throws athletes are allowed three preliminary attempts if the field numbers more than eight participants. Then the best performers are allowed three more attempts.
In the vertical jumps the high jump — and pole vault — the participants are allowed to continue until they have three successive failures. If two or more contestants tie, the competitor with the fewest failures at the last height cleared is the winner; if still tied, the total number of failures is the deciding factor; if a tie remains, the total number of jumps is considered. Scoring differs according to the meet. Many national competitions are scored on the basis of 10 points for first place, 8 for second, on down to 1 point for sixth.
In international meets, the scoring is 5 for first place, 3 for second, 2 for third, and 1 for fourth. The team with the highest total wins. For road races, cross-country meets, and walking competitions, the winner is given 1 point, the second-place finisher 2 points, and so on; the finish positions are totaled, and the team with the lowest score is the winner.
Track Events The sprints are all-out efforts over the entire distance run. Outdoors the sprints are — yd Indoor sprints are often as short as 50 yd Sprinters use a crouch start in which, after being commanded to get "on your marks" by the starter, the contestant kneels with one knee on the ground and both hands resting behind the starting line.
On the "get set" command, the sprinter raises the knee from the ground in anticipation of the gun. When it fires, the runner will accelerate as quickly as possible from the starting line. To facilitate a quick start by giving the runner something to push off against, devices known as starting blocks are used.
In the longer sprints — m and yd, m and yd — the races are run in assigned lanes for the entire circumference of the track. To ensure fairness for all participants, the start is staggered so that runners farther out from the inside lane start farther ahead of the contestants to their left, who have a smaller circumference to run around; as a result all runners travel the same distance.
The middle distance races range from to 2, m Such is the popularity of the mile that it is the only event of English measure still recognized by the IAAF for record purposes.
While the yd In the middle distances, fatigue becomes an increasingly important factor, requiring the competitors to pace themselves so that they can finish the race in the shortest possible time; or, if the race is a tactical one, to be able to summon a sprint at the end in order to defeat the other contestants.
The long distances range from 3, to 30, m 1. Also recognized by the IAAF is the one-hour run, in which the participants run as far as they can within one hour's time. As with the middle distances the longer the race the less decisive is the inherent speed of the various competitors. Rather, the endurance fitness of the athletes and their use of various strategies play a more important role. Cross-country running originated in England indeed, Elizabethan-era poetry mentions boys playing similar sports , but, with an assist from the spread of the British Empire, had become fully international by the s — as the book points out, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa had governing bodies for the sport before Germany, Finland, Sweden or Belgium did.
Some sports evolve in fundamental ways over the years. Think of football adding the forward pass or basketball incorporating the three-point line and a shot clock. The popularity of running in the U. But, as Hutchinson describes in the book, there was an era before them where runners began to dedicate themselves to the sport full time, rather than using running as a form of training for other sports.
Speaking of Prefontaine, his story is well known thanks to a mix of his prodigious talent, his tragic early death and his depiction in several Hollywood movies. But other cross-country runners are worthy of greater renown, even those who achieved fame in their times. They were imitating fox hunts on horseback. Although most cross-country competitors also run distance events in track and field, the two are separate sports.
The cross-country season is still the fall and events are run through open country, often over rather rude trails, not on roads or tracks.
There is no standardized cross-country distance. IAAF rules specify minimums for international competition of 12, meters about 7. Since distances and difficulty vary, world records are not kept for the event.
For High School in Ohio it is 3. Team competition is very important in cross-country. Teams are made up of five to nine runners and the order of finish is determined by adding up the places in which team members finish - that is, 1 point is awarded for a first-place, 2 points for second, and so on. The team with the lowest score wins. Together we will get there! Family Fun!
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