World Athletics

Athletics is the original Olympic sport, and the first men’s Olympic athletics events of the modern era were contested at the inaugural edition of the Games, at Athinai 1896. On 17 July 1912, 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. The organization would be rebranded to the International Association of Athletics Federations in 2001 (maintaining the IAAF acronym), and then again in 2019 to its current name, World Athletics.

Women athletes were allowed to compete for the first time at the Olympics at Amsterdam 1928. The first official World Championships in Athletics with events for both genders would only come much later, with the first edition of the competition being held in 1983, in Helsinki, Finland.

Just like in the senior competitions, track & field athletics has been part of the programme of the Youth Summer Olympics since its inaugural edition, at Singapore 2010, with events for boys and girls.

Besides the track & field and road running competitions, World Athletics also oversees the disciplines of: Cross-Country (inaugural IAAF World Cross-Country Championships staged in 1973, in the Belgian town of Waregem); Mountain Running (first Mountain Running World Championships staged in 1985, by then overseen by the International Committee, now known as the Mountain Running of the World Mountain Running Association); Trail Running (first World Trail Running Championships held in 2007); and Ultra Running (in affiliation with the International Association of Ultrarunners).

The Principality of Monaco has been home to the World Athletics’ headquarters since 1993. The total number of countries and territories affiliated to World Athletics stands at 214 as of January 2026, and its current president is former Olympic gold medalist Seb Coe of Great Britain.