Athletics Competition at the Olympic Games - History of Track and Field Sports

Athletics

Athletics is a sports field that involves competitions in walking, running, hurdling, jumping (high jump, pole vault, long jump, and triple jump), throwing (javelin, discus, weights and hammer) and combined decathlon and heptathlon. For the Summer Olympic Games, the most prestigious competition in athletics, there are 47 events: 24 for men, 23 for women. It is in athletics that there are more countries competing in the Olympic Games than in other sports. Since 1900, when George Orton won the 2,500 m steeplechase at the Olympic Games in Paris, the Canadians have competed internationally and have won several Olympic titles in the race (Percy Williams, Donovan Bailey, Perdita Felicien) and high jump (Ethel Catherwood, Duncan McNaughton, Derek Drouin).

Early Canadian track and field

The origins of Canadian athletics can be traced back to Aboriginal races and throwing competitions, a British officer and civil servant Athletics Competitions, The Caledonian games of Scottish immigrants, and power contests at fairs. In August 1844, the club Olympique of Montreal organizes a competition on the two days called the ” Olympic Games of Montreal “. The program includes track and field events as well as a lacrosse game between a white team and an Aboriginal team. When Confederation was proclaimed in 1867, athletics competitions and races were already prominent on the sports scene. Perhaps the most popular event is that of “professional pedestrians” -the race at will – in which participants must cover as much distance as they can by walking or running over a given period, usually six days.

In 1884, representatives of the Athletics clubs of Ontario and Quebec founded the Canadian Amateur Athletic Association. The organization was first known as the Canadian Athletics Association (CAA) from 1909 to 1991, then became Athletics Canada.

Until 1968, the Canadian Athletics Association was chaperoned by the Amateur Athletics Union of Canada. The Union favors strict amateurism, that is, the idea that from a moral point of view, participation must remain the only motivation and must not be accompanied by any material gain. This philosophy is implemented through a prohibited list that governs athlete eligibility. It limits participation on the one hand to people who enjoy the activity and have the financial means to practice it and on the other hand to academic and social institutions (universities, YMCAs and Police Athletic associations) who have agreed to embrace the ideology of self-improvement that accompanies these sporting events.

Until the early 1920s, the men who controlled the world of Sports managed to exclude women, on the dubious basis that vigorous physical activities could damage the reproductive organs of these ladies and were otherwise ” unhealthy.” During the 1920s, however, women exerted enough pressure for the Amateur Athletics Union to create a women’s Committee and for the International Association of Athletics Federations (AIFA) to include women’s events in the Olympic Games.

Robert Kerr, 1908

Canada’s Robert Kerr won a gold medal in the 200 m and a bronze medal in the 100 m in athletics at the 1908 London Olympics.

International competitions until the 1960s

Hamilton sprinter Robert Kerr used his lightning starts to dominate competitions in Canada, the United States, and the British Empire and to win gold and bronze medals at the London Olympics in 1908. The Canadian sprint entered a period of Splendour at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam. Percy Williams of Vancouver won the 100 m and the 200 m with his spectacular finish in the jump, while Fanny “Bobbie” Rosenfeld, Jane Bell, Ethel Smith, and Myrtle Cook together won the first all-time women’s 4×100 m relay. In the next decade, Canadian sprinters won six more Olympic medals and 22 British Empire Medals. These performances were not repeated until the 1960s when Vancouver’s Harry Jerome set a new world record on the 100m and won both the Commonwealth and Pan American Games, as well as a bronze medal at the Olympic Games.