ORIGIN OF TRACK AND FIELD
The ancient Olympic Games began in  the year 776 BC, when Koroibos, won the stadium race, a foot race 600 feet long.
From 776 BC, the Games were held in Olympia every four years for almost 12 centuries. Additional athletic events were gradually added until, by the 5th century BC, the religious festival consisted of a five-day program. The athletic events included: three foot races, the pentathlon (five contests: discus, javelin, long jump, wrestling, and foot race), pugme (boxing), pale (wrestling), pankration, and the hoplitodromos.
The marathon is a modern event that was first introduced in the Modern Olympic Games of 1896 in Athens, a race from Marathon to the Olympic Stadium, a distance of 42.195 kilometers. The race commemorates the run of Pheidippides, who carried the news of the Persian landing at Marathon of 490 BC to Sparta. The distance of the modern marathon was standardized as 26 miles 385 yards or 42,195 kilometers in 1908.
Track and field athletics in the United States dates from the 1860s. In 1913 American Jim Thorpe was stripped of his 1912 Olympic victories in the decathlon and pentathlon and banned from further competition after it was learned he had played semiprofessional baseball. In 1982 the International Olympic Committee [IOC] posthumously restored both Thorpe’s amateur status and his two Olympic medals.
The first NCAA national championships were held for men in 1921, and women’s track and field became part of the Olympic Games in 1928. Over the next 30 years the U.S. and Soviet teams battled in one of the sport’s longest and most competitive rivalries.
The Athletics Congress now regulates the sport in the United States; the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) sanctions international competition.