History & origins
The story of Running
Running is the original sport — the only event at the first thirteen ancient Olympics was a sprint down the length of the stadium. The modern version was rebuilt in nineteenth-century England and America, and its two defining stories since have been the fall of supposedly impossible barriers and the rise of East African distance running.
Milestones
11 moments that shaped the modern game.
- 776 BCE
The stadion race
The only event at the first ancient Olympics was a sprint of about 192 m, the length of the stadium. The winner's name gave the whole four-year Olympiad its title.
- 1896
The modern Olympics and the first marathon
Athens staged a race from the town of Marathon to the city, inventing the event to evoke the legend of Pheidippides. Greece's Spyridon Louis won it.
- 1908
The distance is fixed
The London marathon course ran from Windsor Castle to the royal box at the stadium — 26 miles and 385 yards. That arbitrary figure became the official distance in 1921.
- 1936
Jesse Owens in Berlin
Owens won four gold medals at the Games staged as a showcase for Nazi racial theory, a result whose significance was immediately understood everywhere.
- 1954
The four-minute mile
Roger Bannister ran 3:59.4 at Oxford, breaking a barrier widely described as physiologically impossible. It was beaten again within seven weeks.
- 1960
Abebe Bikila runs barefoot
An Ethiopian won the Rome marathon in bare feet, the first Olympic gold by a Black African athlete, and started six decades of East African distance dominance.
- 1968
Altitude in Mexico City
Thin air produced extraordinary sprint records and destroyed distance times, and made the case that African runners training at altitude had a structural advantage.
- 1984
The women's Olympic marathon
Women were finally permitted to race the marathon at the Olympics, sixty years after they were first allowed to compete in athletics at all.
- 2009
Usain Bolt runs 9.58
Bolt lowered his own 100 m world record in Berlin by a margin usually associated with timing errors, and set a 200 m mark of 19.19 in the same week.
- 2019
Under two hours
Eliud Kipchoge ran 1:59:40 for the marathon distance in a staged event in Vienna. Pacing and conditions meant it was not record-eligible, but the barrier was gone.
- 2020s
The shoe era
Carbon-plated racing shoes produced a wave of distance records across every road event, prompting World Athletics to regulate midsole thickness rather than prohibit the design.