The Abbott World Marathon Majors (AWMM), originally known as the World Marathon Majors (WMM), is a championship-style competition for marathon runners that started in 2006. It comprises six annual races for the cities of Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York City, a biennial race, the IAAF World Championships Marathon, and a quadrennial race, the Olympic Games Marathon.
The Men's decathlon competition at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, was held at the Olympic Stadium on 29–30 July.
The IAAF World Athletics Championships, is a biennial athletics event organized by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). The World Championships were started in 1976 in response to the International Olympic Committee dropping the men's 50 km walk from the Olympic athletics programme for the 1976 Montreal Olympics, despite its constant presence at the games since 1932. The IAAF chose to host its own world championship event instead, a month and a half after the Olympics. It was the first World Championships that the IAAF had hosted separate from the Olympic Games. A second limited event was held in 1980, and a major expansion in 1983 is considered the official start of the event. It was then held every four years until 1991, when it switched to a two-year cycle.
Athletics has been contested at every Summer Olympics since the birth of the modern Olympic movement at the 1896 Summer Olympics. The athletics program traces its earliest roots to events used in the ancient Greek Olympics. The modern program includes track and field events, road running events, and racewalking events. Cross country running was also on the program in earlier editions but it was dropped after the 1924 Summer Olympics.
IAAF Road Race Label Events are races that the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) designates as one of the "leading road races around the world." The classification was first introduced for the 2008 running season, upon the suggestion of the IAAF Road Running Commission. In that first year, only Gold and Silver Labels were awarded, and 49 races were recognised. A third tier was introduced in 2010, entitled the Bronze Label, and in 2015, 88 races were listed in total. The races are split into three categories: marathons, half marathons and other. Within the "other" category are traditional road race distances, over which IAAF world records can be set, along with some "Classical races," which span unusual distances.
The IAAF Diamond League is an annual series of elite track and field athletic competitions. The series began with the 2010 IAAF Diamond League. It was designed to replace the IAAF Golden League, which had been held annually since 1998.
At the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, 29 athletics events were contested, 23 for men and 6 for women. The program of events was unchanged from the previous Games. There was a total of 776 participants from 43 countries competing.
The athletics competitions at the 2012 Olympic Games in London were held during the last 10 days of the Games, on 3–12 August. Track and field events took place at the Olympic Stadium in east London. The road events, however, started and finished on The Mall in central London.
At the 2004 Summer Olympics, the athletics events were held at the Athens Olympic Stadium from August 18 to August 29, except for the marathons, the race walks, and the shot put. A total of 46 events were contested, of which 24 by male and 22 by female athletes.
The men's 100 metres event at the 2016 Summer Olympics took place between 13–14 August at the Olympic Stadium.
Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics were held during the last ten days of the games, from August 15 to August 24, 2008, at the Beijing National Stadium. The Olympic sport of athletics is split into four distinct sets of events: track and field events, road running events, and racewalking events.
The men's 100 metres race was the first event run at the modern Olympics, on 6 April 1896. It was the shortest race on the Athletics at the 1896 Summer Olympics programme. 21 athletes were entered in the first round, divided into three heats of seven runners, but six of them later withdrew. The top two athletes in each heat advanced to the final, which took place on 10 April.
At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, 46 events in athletics were contested, 24 for men and 22 for women. There were a total number of 2134 participating athletes from 193 countries.
The men's marathon at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro took place on the Sambódromo on 21 August, the final day of the Games.
At the 1896 Summer Olympics, the first modern Olympiad, twelve athletics events were contested. A total of 25 medals were awarded. The medals were later denoted as 37 modern medals. All of the events except the marathon were held in the Panathinaiko Stadium, which was also the finish for the marathon. Events were held on 6 April, 7 April, 9 April, and 10 April 1896. Altogether, 64 athletes, all men, from ten nations competed. This made athletics the most international of the nine sports at the 1896 Games.