Running, jumping and throwing are about as simple as sport gets, and the stories behind them are anything but. These run from a one-race Olympics in ancient Greece to a discus record that fell in 2024, by way of a steeplechase with a lap too many, a discus champion nearly scared off by a homemade fake, and a mile record that lasted just 46 days.
Every tile in a Track and Field game carries one of these. Open one to read it now, or leave them for the board to hand you.
Legends
nine stories
1A one-woman team won the national title
On the tile: Babe Didrikson1932
At the 1932 national AAU track championships, Babe Didrikson represented the Employers Casualty Insurance Company of Dallas, and she was its entire team. She entered eight of the ten events, won five, tied for first in the high jump and broke four world records. Her thirty points were eight more than the whole second-place team scored. At the Los Angeles Olympics that summer, where women could enter only three events, she won gold in the hurdles and javelin and silver in the high jump.
On July 10, 1924, at the Paris Olympics, Finland's Paavo Nurmi ran the first two laps of the 1,500-meter final with a stopwatch clutched in his right hand. He won in an Olympic record. The 5,000-meter final started just 52 minutes after the 1,500 ended, and Nurmi won that too, in another Olympic record, two-tenths of a second ahead of his rival Ville Ritola. By the end of those Games he had collected five gold medals.
3Sticks, rope, and the first gold for a Black woman
On the tile: Alice Coachman1948
As a girl, Alice Coachman ran barefoot on dusty roads and practiced the high jump over sticks and rope. She won the U.S. national high jump title every year from 1939 through 1948, but World War II canceled the 1940 and 1944 Olympics. At the 1948 London Games she finally got her chance and cleared 5 feet 6 1/8 inches on her first attempt, an Olympic record. She became the first Black woman from any country to win Olympic gold, and King George VI put the medal around her neck.
4Told he would never walk, he jumped to eight golds
On the tile: Ray Ewry1900-1908
Ray Ewry was diagnosed with polio at age seven and told he would never walk again. He took up jumping as therapy to regain his mobility. He captained the track team at Purdue, and at the 1900 Paris Olympics spectators nicknamed him the Human Frog. Competing in the standing high jump, standing long jump and standing triple jump, he won eight Olympic gold medals across three Games. Later he worked with New York's Board of Water Supply to build dams and reservoirs.
5His doctor wanted to amputate; he ran a record mile
On the tile: Cunningham1934
When Glenn Cunningham was seven, a schoolhouse fire killed his brother and burned the boy's legs so badly that his doctor wanted to amputate them. It was feared he would never walk again. Rehabilitation and sheer determination got him walking again, and then running. Nicknamed the Kansas Flyer, he set a world record for the mile, 4:06.8, in 1934, and won a silver medal in the 1,500 meters at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He later earned a PhD from New York University.
Betty Robinson was a high school student when a teacher who coached track watched her run to catch his train and could not believe she made it. At 16 she won the 100 meters at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, the first Games with women's track and field. In 1931 she was badly hurt in a plane crash and was at first thought to be dead. She spent six months in a wheelchair. Unable to crouch for a sprint start, she ran the third leg of the winning 4x100 relay at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
7He did not learn about the Sunday heat on the boat
On the tile: Eric Liddell1924Myth busted
In the film Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell discovers that his 100-meter heat at the 1924 Paris Olympics falls on a Sunday just as he is boarding the boat to France. In real life the schedule was public months in advance, and Liddell learned in the fall of 1923 that the heats were on a Sunday. He gave up the 100 meters, his best event, and his places on both relay teams. Instead he won bronze in the 200 meters and gold in the 400, in a world record 47.6 seconds.
In 1971, Bill Bowerman, a track coach and co-founder of Nike, wanted a shoe sole that could grip the slick new urethane track at the University of Oregon. One morning he noticed the grid pattern of his wife Barbara's waffle iron, a 1936 wedding present. He poured liquid urethane into it, and it glued shut for good. Undeterred, he bought secondhand waffle irons and kept experimenting. Years later, his son Tom found the rusted original in an old trash pit, and it now rests in Nike's archives.
Harvard student James Connolly wanted to go to the first modern Olympics in Athens. His dean warned that his low academic standing might keep him from being readmitted, so Connolly walked out of Harvard. On April 6, 1896, he won the triple jump, at the time two hops and a jump, and became the first champion of the modern Games. He went on to publish more than 200 short stories and 25 novels, and fifty years after leaving Harvard, he returned to lecture there.
The oldest event of the ancient Olympic Games was the stadion, a sprint of one stade, about 192 meters, the length of the stadium. For the first 13 Olympiads, that footrace was the only event on the program. Longer races were added later, including a two-stade race and a distance race of 7 to 24 stades. The throwing events came later still: World Athletics dates the javelin, as part of the pentathlon, to 708 BC.
One ancient Olympic race was run in battle gear. In the hoplitodromos, athletes raced in the equipment of a hoplite, a Greek foot soldier: a helmet, a shield and shin guards called greaves. It is first recorded at Olympia in 520 BC, over two stades, and it was usually the last event of the Games. The race harked back to a time when sport still served as battle training. Over the centuries the gear got lighter: the greaves were dropped in the fifth century BC, and the helmets after the fourth.
Long jumpers at the ancient Olympics did not jump empty-handed. They carried halteres, jumping weights of lead or stone shaped something like old telephone receivers. The jumper held them out in front as he rose, then thrust them behind his back and let them drop as he came down, to carry his body farther. Between competitions the same weights served as lifting equipment in training. The long jump was one of the five events of the ancient pentathlon.
The story goes that a messenger named Pheidippides ran from the battlefield at Marathon to Athens to announce victory over the Persians, then died on the spot. Most ancient authors do not support it. The historian Herodotus describes a different run in 490 BC: Pheidippides was sent from Athens to Sparta, about 150 miles, to ask for help before the battle, and he arrived the day after he left. The Marathon-to-Athens run appears in much later writers. Every September, the Spartathlon race retraces the route to Sparta.
Hurdle racing began in England in the 1830s, with wooden barriers set along a track. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge stretched the race to 120 yards, and in 1864 they set the hurdles at 42 inches, the same height men clear today. In 1888 the French fixed the distance at 110 meters, a hair longer than 120 yards. The modern race has ten hurdles, and it has been held at every Olympics since the first modern Games in 1896.
Race walking goes back to the 17th and 18th centuries, when footmen walked alongside their masters' coaches and aristocrats bet on whose footman would win a race. By the 19th century the professional sport was called pedestrianism, and its six-day races, walked almost nonstop from Monday until midnight Saturday, drew big crowds. Its Olympic debut, in 1904, was a half-mile walk inside the all-around championship, an early forerunner of the decathlon. The rules still separate it from running: one foot must stay in contact with the ground, and the advancing leg must straighten.
The earliest recorded pole vault contest for height in England was held in Lancashire in 1843, and early vaulters used poles of ash or hickory with iron spikes. Lighter bamboo poles caught on after 1904, steel arrived in the 1940s, and by the early 1960s flexible fiberglass had taken over. Through almost all of those changes one country ruled the Olympics: the United States won every men's title from 1896 through 1968, except at the 1906 Intercalated Games. Women first vaulted at the Olympics in 2000.
In an elite sprint, the starting blocks contain sensors that detect false starts. Under World Athletics rules, a reaction time of less than 0.1 seconds counts as a false start. All the athletes are called back, and the offender is disqualified. The rule spares no one. At the 2011 World Championships, Usain Bolt, the world record holder, was disqualified from the 100 meters for a false start.
The first international cross country race was run in 1898 at Ville d'Avray, France, and the first International Cross Country Championships followed in 1903 at Hamilton Park Racecourse in Scotland. The Olympics held men's cross country races only three times, in 1912, 1920 and 1924. The last one, in Paris, was run on one of the hottest days in the city's history, at over 40 degrees Celsius, above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, past fumes from an industrial chimney and through knee-high thistles. Only 15 of the 38 starters finished, and several were taken to the hospital.
In 1984, at a meet in Berlin, Uwe Hohn threw the javelin 104.80 meters, obliterating the world record. Two years later the javelin itself was changed. Its center of gravity was moved four centimeters forward to help prevent too many flat landings, and the change made it unlikely that anyone would ever throw as far as Hohn again. So far no one has. The men's world record with the new javelin, 98.48 meters by Jan Zelezny, has stood since 1996.
At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, Jim Hines got away slowly in the 100-meter final, then drove to the gold medal in 9.95 seconds, the first legal time under 10 seconds on automatic timing. Mexico City sits at 2,240 meters, about 7,350 feet. Organizers had worried about the thin air for distance runners, but sprinters and jumpers thrived in it. Automatic timing became the rule for records later: since 1977, World Athletics has accepted only times recorded automatically to the hundredth of a second.
3A 400-meter record that lasted nearly twenty years
On the tile: Lee Evans1968
In the 400-meter final at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, Lee Evans and Larry James became the first men to run the distance in under 44 seconds, and Americans swept all three medals. Evans's time is listed today as 43.86, from a new reading of the photo finish in the early 1970s. In 1968 it was officially 43.8, because official times then went only to the tenth of a second. His world record lasted until 1988, when Butch Reynolds ran 43.29 at the Weltklasse meet in Zurich.
4The first four-minute mile was a record for 46 days
On the tile: Bannister1954
On May 6, 1954, at Iffley Road in Oxford, Roger Bannister ran a mile in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds, with Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher setting the pace. He was the first under four minutes, but the world record was his for only 46 days. On June 21 in Turku, Finland, Australia's John Landy ran 3:57.9. Bannister beat Landy when they met at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games that summer. He was a medical student at the time, and he went on to become one of Britain's leading neurologists.
At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Jackie Joyner-Kersee scored 7,291 points in the heptathlon, a world record that still stands. Within the seven events she won the 100-meter hurdles, the 200 meters and the long jump and tied for first in the high jump, and she finished 394 points ahead of the silver medalist. At the same Games she also won the separate long jump. In 1999, Sports Illustrated for Women named her the greatest female athlete of the 20th century.
In 1989, Cuba's Javier Sotomayor cleared 2.44 meters, the first high jump over eight feet. In 1993 he raised the world record to 2.45 meters, and no other man has cleared eight feet. His Olympic gold came at a far lower bar. Boycotts kept him out of the 1984 and 1988 Games, and at Barcelona in 1992 he won with just 2.34 meters. Several jumpers cleared that height, but he had done it without a miss, and nobody made 2.37.
Edwin Moses was a physics major at Morehouse College when he developed a new way to run the 400-meter hurdles: 13 steps between hurdles for the whole race instead of the usual 14. It carried him to Olympic gold in 1976 in a world record. Then, starting on September 2, 1977, he won 107 consecutive finals. The streak lasted nine years and nine months, until Danny Harris beat him in Madrid on June 4, 1987. He won Olympic gold again in 1984, and his best time, 47.02, came on his birthday in 1983.
8Olympic decathlon champion at 17, almost a beginner
On the tile: Bob Mathias1948
Bob Mathias did not try the decathlon until 1948. He was 17, and his first one came only two weeks before the national AAU meet that year. At the London Olympics that summer, the second day of the decathlon was cold and rainy, and officials lost the marker for his best discus throw. He won anyway, with 7,139 points, and became the youngest man to win an individual Olympic gold medal in track and field. In 1952 he became the first to win back-to-back Olympic decathlons.
On August 16, 2008, in the Olympic 100-meter final in Beijing, Usain Bolt ran a world record 9.69 seconds even though he shut down before the finish, turning and dropping his arms in celebration. Estimates of what he might have run all the way through the tape went as low as 9.55. Exactly one year later, on August 16, 2009, in Berlin, he ran 9.58. That is still the world record.
In the 400-meter final at the 1908 London Olympics, Britain's Wyndham Halswelle faced three Americans. Coming into the home straight, John Carpenter moved farther and farther toward the outside, forcing Halswelle to within 18 inches of the outside edge of the track. An umpire signaled the judges to break the tape. Officials declared the race void, disqualified Carpenter and ordered a rerun two days later in lanes. The other two Americans did not start, so Halswelle ran the rerun alone and took the gold. He made one farewell appearance that year, in Glasgow, and never raced again.
2World records in about 45 minutes, with a sore back
On the tile: Jesse Owens1935
Jesse Owens arrived at the Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on May 25, 1935, with a sore back from falling down a flight of stairs. He tested it in the 100-yard dash and tied the world record. Then he set world records in the long jump, the 220-yard dash and the 220-yard low hurdles. Three world records and a tie took him about 45 minutes, a year before his four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics.
3Hurdles made of telephone poles, throws into trees
On the tile: Paris 19001900
Track and field at the 1900 Paris Olympics was held at the Croix Catelan in the Bois de Boulogne, and the park got in the way. The discus landing area was a lane between two rows of trees, and many of the competitors' best throws hit the trees. In the 400-meter hurdles, the hurdles were 30-foot telephone poles laid across the track, and the last obstacle was a water jump. Walter Tewksbury of the United States won in an Olympic record 57.6 seconds.
4The Olympic steeplechase that ran one lap too long
On the tile: Extra lap1932
At the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, the lap counter in the steeplechase final made a mistake, and every runner ran an extra lap. The race turned out to be 3,460 meters instead of 3,000. Finland's Volmari Iso-Hollo won comfortably, so the extra distance made no difference to him. It did to the others. At the proper finish, Joe McCluskey of the United States had been second, but Britain's Tom Evenson passed him on the bonus lap and took the silver medal.
5The first woman to run Boston came out of the bushes
On the tile: Bobbi Gibb1966
Women could not officially enter the Boston Marathon in 1966, so Roberta Gibb, known as Bobbi, jumped out of the bushes in Hopkinton and ran it anyway. She finished in 3 hours 21 minutes 40 seconds, and the Boston Athletic Association now calls her the first woman to run the race. The next year, Kathrine Switzer signed her entry form as K. V. Switzer and became the first woman to receive a number. Women were finally allowed to run officially in 1972, when eight started.
John Landy was the second man to run a mile in under four minutes, but many remember him for a race in which he stopped. At the Australian Championships in Melbourne in March 1956, months before the Olympics there, Ron Clarke fell during the mile. Landy, running close behind, stopped, checked on him and helped him to his feet, then set off after the field. He made up a large deficit and still won. A bronze sculpture of the moment stands in Melbourne's Olympic Park.
7Knee surgery, then the first Olympic women's marathon
On the tile: Joan Benoit1984
The first Olympic women's marathon was also the first track and field event of the 1984 Los Angeles Games, starting at 8 a.m. Joan Benoit of the United States had needed arthroscopic knee surgery only a few weeks before the U.S. Olympic Trials. In the race she moved into the lead early and never gave it up. Norway's Grete Waitz, the favorite, let her go, later saying she thought the move came too early. Benoit won in 2:24:52, nearly a minute and a half ahead of Waitz.
In the women's 10,000 meters at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Ethiopia's Derartu Tulu and South Africa's Elana Meyer left the field behind and ran together until the bell. Then Tulu pulled away to win, becoming the first Black African woman to take an Olympic gold. South Africa, banned from the Olympics since 1964 over its treatment of Black citizens, had just been readmitted. The two women did not know each other well, but Tulu waited for Meyer at the finish, and they ran a victory lap hand in hand.
9She lit the Olympic flame, then won the 400 meters
On the tile: Cathy Freeman2000
Organizers of the 2000 Sydney Olympics chose Cathy Freeman, an Aboriginal Australian sprinter, to light the Olympic flame at the opening ceremony. With Australia trying to make amends for its historically poor treatment of Aboriginal people, she was a symbol to her people. Then came the 400-meter final. She trailed through 200 meters, pulled almost even with Jamaica's Lorraine Graham on the final curve, took the lead with 70 meters left and won easily in 49.11 seconds.