Early British sport was produced through countryside activities, education and military training. However the idea of sport was born from leisure market day during the 1600’s. During market days a man may show his strength through a series of activities like; boxing and log lifting. Most physical activities had been for military purposes and being fit to fight. The first real idea of sport was represented by fencing, archery and sparring for the upper class.
The Cotswold Olimpick Games, a sports festival which emerged in the 17th century England, also featured athletics in the form of sledgehammer throwing contests. Another early athletic example that consisted from 1796 to 1798, was L'Olympiade de la République which was held in revolutionary France and is an early forerunner to the modern summer Olympic Games. The main event of this competition was a running event, but various ancient Greek disciplines were also on display. The 1796 Olympiade marks the introduction of the metric system into sport.
The Royal Military Academy at Woolwich held and organised a competition in 1849, but the first regular series of meetings was held by Exeter College, Oxford from 1850. The first modern-style indoor athletics meetings were recorded shortly after in the 1860s, including a meet at Ashburnham Hall in London which featured four running events and a triple jump competition.
On the 17 July 1912 in Stockholm, Sweden, following the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in the Swedish capital, the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) was founded as the world governing body for the sport of track and field Athletics. During the ten decades that followed Athletics underwent many changes which reflected the political and socio-economic evolution of the wider world. Even the IAAF’s name changed, in 2001 becoming the ‘International Association of Athletics Federations’ to reflect the growth of a professional sporting world which