Track and field in the context of Fully automatic time

An athlete is most commonly a person who competes in one or more sports involving physical strength, speed, power, or endurance. Sometimes, the word "athlete" is used to refer specifically to sport of athletics competitors, i.e. including track and field and marathon runners but excluding e.g. swimmers, footballers or basketball players. However, in other contexts (mainly in the United States) it is used to refer to all athletics (physical culture) participants of any sport. For the latter definition, the word sportsperson or the gendered sportsman or sportswoman are also used. A third definition is also sometimes used, meaning anyone who is physically fit regardless of whether they compete in a sport.

Athletes may be professionals or amateurs. Most professional athletes have particularly well-developed physiques obtained by extensive physical training and strict exercise, accompanied by a strict dietary regimen.

Athletics is a group of sporting events that involves competitive running, jumping and throwing. The most common types of athletics competitions are track and field, road running, cross-country running, and race walking.

The results of racing events are decided by finishing position (or time, where measured), while the jumps and throws are won by the athlete that achieves the highest or furthest measurement from a series of attempts. The simplicity of the competitions, and the lack of a need for expensive equipment, makes athletics one of the most common types of sports in the world. Athletics is mostly an individual sport, with the exception of relay races and competitions which combine athletes' performances for a team score, such as cross country.

The 1968 Summer Olympics (Spanish: Juegos Olímpicos de Verano de 1968), officially known as the Games of the XIX Olympiad (Spanish: Juegos de la XIX Olimpiada) and officially branded as Mexico 1968 (Spanish: México 1968), were an international multi-sport event held from 12 to 27 October 1968, in Mexico City, Mexico. These were the first Olympic Games to be staged in Latin America, the first to be staged in a Spanish-speaking country, and the first to be staged in the Global South. Consequently, these games also marked the first time that there would be a gap of two Olympic Games not to be held in Europe. They were also the first Games to use an all-weather (smooth) track for track and field events instead of the traditional cinder track, as well as the first example of the Olympics exclusively using electronic timekeeping equipment.

The 1968 Games were the third to be held in the last quarter of the year, after the 1956 Games in Melbourne and the 1964 Games in Tokyo. The 1968 Mexican Student Movement was crushed days prior, hence the Games were correlated to the government's repression.

The triple jump, sometimes referred to as the hop, step and jump or the hop, skip and jump, is a track and field event, similar to long jump. As a group, the two events are referred to as the "horizontal jumps". The competitor runs down the track and performs a hop, a bound and then a jump into the sand pit. The triple jump was inspired by accounts of lengthy jumps at the ancient Olympic Games and has been a modern Olympics event since the Games' inception in 1896.

According to World Athletics rules, "the hop shall be made so that an athlete lands first on the same footas that from which he has taken off; in the step he shall land on theother foot, from which, subsequently, the jump is performed."

The decathlon is a combined event in athletics consisting of 10 track and field events. The word was formed in analogy to the word "pentathlon", from Greek δέκα (déka 'ten') and ἆθλον (áthlon 'contest, prize'). Events are held over two consecutive days and the winners are determined by the combined performance in all. Performance is judged not by the position achieved but rather on a points system in each event, . The decathlon is contested mainly by male athletes, while female athletes typically compete in the heptathlon.

Traditionally, the title of "World's Greatest Athlete" has been given to the person who wins the decathlon. This began when Gustav V of Sweden told Jim Thorpe, "Sir, you are the world's greatest athlete" after Thorpe won the decathlon at the Stockholm Olympics in 1912.

The men's decathlon was a track and field athletics event held as part of the athletics at the 1912 Summer Olympics programme. The competition was held from Saturday, July 13, 1912, to Monday, July 15, 1912. It was the first time the decathlon, which had been introduced in 1911, was held at the Olympics; a different ten-event competition, the all-around, had been contested in St. Louis in 1904. Twenty-nine decathletes from twelve nations competed. NOCs could enter up to 12 athletes.

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 race walking events. Cross country running was also on the program in earlier editions but it was dropped after the 1924 Summer Olympics.

Road running is the sport of running on a measured course over an established road. This differs from track and field on a regular track and cross country running over natural terrain.

These events are usually classified as long-distance according to athletics terminology, with races typically ranging from 5 kilometers to 42.2 kilometers in the marathon. They may involve large numbers of runners or wheelchair entrants. Since the late 2010, some road running events also offer Nordic Walking as a separate competition along the same route. The four most common World Athletics recognized distances for road running events are 5K runs, 10K runs, half marathons and marathons.

Cross country running is a sport in which teams and individuals run a race on open-air courses over natural terrain such as dirt or grass. The course, typically 3–12 kilometres (1.9–7.5 mi) long, may include surfaces of grass and earth, pass through woodlands and open country, and include hills, flat ground and sometimes gravel road and minor obstacles. It is both an individual and a team sport; runners are judged on individual times and teams by a points-scoring method. Both men and women of all ages compete in cross country, which usually takes place during autumn and winter, and can include weather conditions of rain, sleet, snow or hail, and a wide range of temperatures. Cross country running teams often have the word Harriers in their names.

Cross country running is one of the disciplines under the umbrella sport of athletics and is a natural-terrain version of long-distance track and road running. Although open-air running competitions are prehistoric, the rules and traditions of cross country racing emerged in Britain. The English championship became the first national competition in 1876, and the International Cross Country Championships was held for the first time in 1903. Since 1973, the foremost elite competition has been the World Athletics Cross Country Championships.

A relay race is a racing competition where members of a team take turns completing parts of racecourse or performing a certain action. Relay races take the form of professional races and amateur games. Relay races are common in running, orienteering, swimming, cross-country skiing, biathlon, or ice skating (usually with a baton in the fist). In the Olympic Games, there are several types of relay races that are part of track and field, each consisting of a set number of stages (legs) (usually four), each leg run by different members of a team. The runner finishing one leg is usually required to pass the next runner a stick-like object known as a "baton" while both are running in a marked exchange zone. In most relays, team members cover equal distances: Olympic events for both men and women are the 400-metre (4 × 100-metre) and 1,600-metre (4 × 400-metre) relays. Some non-Olympic relays are held at distances of 800 m, 3,200 m, and 6,000 m. In the less frequently run medley relays, however, the athletes cover different distances in a prescribed order—as in a sprint medley of 200, 200, 400, 800 metres or a distance medley of 1,200, 400, 800, 1,600 metres.

An all-weather running track is a rubberized, artificial running surface for track and field athletics. It provides a consistent surface for competitors to test their athletic ability unencumbered by adverse weather conditions. Historically, various forms of dirt, rocks, sand, and crushed cinders were used. Many examples of these varieties of track still exist worldwide.

Sprinting is running over a short distance at the top-most speed of the body in a limited period of time. It is used in many sports that incorporate running, typically as a way of quickly reaching a target or goal, or avoiding or catching an opponent.

In athletics and track and field, sprints (or dashes) are races over short distances. They are among the oldest running competitions, being recorded at the Ancient Olympic Games. Three sprints are currently held at the modern Summer Olympics and outdoor World Championships: the 100 metres, 200 metres, and 400 metres.

Middle-distance running events are track races longer than sprints, ranging from 500 metres up to two miles (3,218.688 metres). The standard middle distances are the 800 metres, 1500 metres and mile run, although the 3000 metres may also be classified as a middle-distance event. The 1500 m came about as a result of running 3+3⁄4 laps of a 400 m outdoor track or 7+1⁄2 laps of a 200 m indoor track, which were commonplace in continental Europe in the 20th century.

Middle-distance running is unique in that it typically requires attributes found in both sprinters and long-distance runners, including combinations of both footspeed and aerobic endurance. Middle-distance racing is commonly reported to be a highly intense physical experience, requiring large amounts of anaerobic exertion from the body.

The long jump is a track and field event in which athletes combine speed, strength and agility in an attempt to leap as far as possible from a takeoff point. Along with the triple jump, the two events that measure jumping for distance as a group are referred to as the "horizontal jumps". This event has a history in the ancient Olympic Games and has been a modern Olympic event for men since the first Olympics in 1896 and for women since 1948.

The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern, most-practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat for landing. Since ancient times, competitors have successively improved their technique, today employing the universally preferred Fosbury Flop, in which athletes run towards the bar and leap head first with their back to the bar.

The discipline is, alongside the pole vault, one of two vertical clearance events in the Olympic athletics program. It is contested at the World Championships in Athletics and the World Athletics Indoor Championships, and is a common occurrence at track and field meets. The high jump was among the first events deemed acceptable for women, having been held at the 1928 Olympic Games.

Pole vaulting, also known as pole jumping, is a track and field event in which an athlete uses a long and flexible pole, usually made from fiberglass or carbon fiber, as an aid to jump over a bar. Pole jumping was already practiced by the ancient Egyptians, ancient Greeks and the ancient Irish people, although modern pole vaulting, an athletic contest where height is measured, was first established by the German teacher Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths in the 1790s. It has been a full medal event at the Olympic Games since 1896 for men and since 2000 for women.

It is typically classified as one of the four major jumping events in athletics, alongside the high jump, long jump and triple jump. It is unusual among track and field events in that it requires a significant amount of specialised equipment in order to participate, even at a basic level. A number of elite pole vaulters have had backgrounds in gymnastics, including world record breakers Yelena Isinbayeva and Brian Sternberg, reflecting the similar physical attributes required for the events. Physical attributes such as speed, agility and strength, along with technical skill, are essential to pole vaulting.

The javelin throw is a track and field event where the javelin, a spear about 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in) in length, is thrown as far as possible. The javelin thrower gains momentum by running within a predetermined area. Javelin throwing is an event of both the men's decathlon and the women's heptathlon.

The discus throw (pronunciation), also known as disc throw, is a track and field event in which the participant athlete throws an oblate spheroid weight – called a discus – in an attempt to mark a further distance than other competitors. It is an ancient sport, as demonstrated by the fifth-century-BC Myron statue Discobolus. Although not part of the current pentathlon, it was one of the events of the ancient Greek pentathlon, which can be dated back to at least 708 BC, and it is part of the modern decathlon.