Athletic contests in running, walking, jumping, and throwing are among the oldest of all sports and their roots are prehistoric. Athletics events were depicted in the Ancient Egyptian tombs in Saqqara, with illustrations of running at the Heb Sed festival and high jumping appearing in tombs from as early as of 2250 BC.The Tailteann Games were an ancient Celtic festival in Ireland, founded around 1800 BC, and the thirty-day meeting included running and stone-throwing among its sporting events.The original and only event at the first Olympics in 776 BC was a stadium-length running event known as the stadion. The turn of the century was a time of great change and increased interest in the sport, with the foundation of the Amateur Athletics Association in 1880 and the International Amateur Athletics Federation in 1912. In this book, by former presidents of both the Oxford and Cambridge University Athletics Clubs, the evolution of the sport is explored and their accumulated expertise in training and sicipline is related.
