http://www.london2012.com/schedule-and-results/
What up with that?
What up with that?
Its called Athletics in the UK. Did you really not know that?
Because that is what track and field is known as in the rest of the world.
The British term for track and field is athletics. Simple as that.
Wow, I really didn't know that. Interesting.
Greetings rookie. You're new to the sport.
- IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations)
Well T&F is a shortened version of track and field athletics. Not really difficult to work out as there is no other sport called 'athletics'!
The rest of the world also plays a ball game with their feet.... cunningly known as Football. I believe it's known as soccer (?!) in the US.
for many years in the UK the only people referred to as 'athletes' were actual athletes i.e. track and field.
The generic term used over here for 'athlete' has always been 'sportsman' or 'sportswoman' or sometimes even 'sportsperson'. There has been a trend in very recent years to call all sportspeople 'athletes' but it hasn't totally caught on.
The root word of Athletics is based in the Greek term athlos, the Brits used it to describe the ancient sport practiced by the Greeks.
The Americans saw this usage too narrow as other Athletic contests exist.
There's going to be marathons and race walking, neither of them are track or field unless you count the 500 or so meters run on the track at the end of the race.
the entire rest of the world calls "track and field" "athletics."
If this confuses you then good luck working out the distances in the jumps & throws.
Another dumb murkin.
Snap wrote:
http://www.london2012.com/schedule-and-results/What up with that?
"The USATF was known for a number of years as The Athletics Congress after its spin off from the Amateur Athletic Union.
In 1992, The Athletics Congress changed its name to USA Track & Field to increase recognition for the organization and for the sport in the United States."
Before USATF the US had TAC - The Athletics Congress.
So it was always called athletics, even in the US.
CT Coach wrote:
Because that is what track and field is known as in the rest of the world.
Well, not really true as most of the rest of the world doesn't speak English (e.g. it's called 육상 "yook-sang" in Korean). I asked my Australian friend the other night about this, and he said he was more used to the term "track and field," though he had also heard the term "athletics."
"The only thing more boring than track is field."
- Lee Corso
Couldn't use this quote if we called it athletics.
football fan not wrote:
"The only thing more boring than track is field."
- Lee Corso
Couldn't use this quote if we called it athletics.
Guy is one to talk considering he's commentating on a game where they throw balls around to people for one minute and then take 10 minute breaks. Atleast in Track, it's interesting to watch the athletes and their strategies and they don't take breaks. And field can't be much worse than football.
Video/Radio wrote:
There's going to be marathons and race walking, neither of them are track or field unless you count the 500 or so meters run on the track at the end of the race.
I'm not sure about the race walk course, but the marathon will not be ending in the stadium.