Need To Know: Track & Field
Fast Facts
Dates: Aug. 3-Aug. 12
Venue: Olympic Stadium (track and field events), The Mall (road events)
Medal events: 47
Athletes: 2,000
The Basics
By number of athletes and events, track and field (officially called athletics, so as to include the road races like the marathons and race walks) is the largest sport at the Olympics. It's also habitually one of the most anticipated, with the men's 100 metres in particular often hyped as the marquee event of the Games. Legendary performers like Jesse Owens (four gold medals in 1936), Carl Lewis (nine gold from 1984-'96), Florence Griffith-Joyner (three gold in 1988) and Usain Bolt (three gold in 2008) have all starred in track and field. Another aspect of the sport's appeal is its simplicity: the winners are those that run the fastest, jump the highest and throw the farthest.
Athletics events can be divided into four categories: track, field, combined, and road. The 24 track events (12 men's, 12 women's) are foot races ranging in distance from 100-10,000 metres, including a handful of hurdles and steeplechase events. The 16 field events include leaping contests like the long jump and high jump, and throwing contests like the shot put and javelin. The two combined events are the decathlon (a 10-discipline mix of both track and field for men) and the heptathlon (the women's version of the decathlon, encompassing seven disciplines). The five road events include the marathons and race walks.
Canadians To Watch
What did men's shot putter Dylan Armstrong do in 2011? Only toss the top distance in the world (22.21 metres), win the elite Diamond League series (track and field's version of a regular season) and pick up the silver medal at the world championships. Now the Kamloops, B.C., thrower is Canada's best hope for an Olympic track and field medal — something he missed out on by an agonizing one centimetre in 2008 in Beijing.
Armstrong appears to be fully recovered from an arm injury that hampered him at the indoor worlds in March, when he failed to advance past the preliminary round. He's reached the podium in all seven of his outdoor events in 2012, winning three, and sits second in the Diamond League standings. But he'll have to contend with the likes of rising star David Storl (the 22-year-old German star who upset Armstrong at the 2011 world championships), Tomasz Majewski (the defending Olympic champion), and the U.S. triumvirate of Reese Hoffa (the Diamond League leader), Ryan Whiting (the indoor world champ) and Christian Cantwell. Each of those guys has thrown farther than Armstron this season — and in the case of all three Americans, multiple times.
Jessica Zelinka is in top form heading into the Olympics. Not only did the London, Ont., native set a new national heptathlon record of 6,599 points at the Canadian Track & Field Trials over Canada Day weekend, she also stunned a stacked field to win the 100m hurdles title, beating star specialists like Priscilla Lopes-Schliep, Perdita Felicien, and Phylicia Geroge. Zelinka set the previous Canadian heptathlon record of 6,490 points in her fifth-place finish at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. She also won gold at the 2007 Pan Am Games, and silver at the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
International Athletes To Watch
With apologies to Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt was the star of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The Jamaican sprinter wowed audiences around the world with stunning world-record-setting victories in the 100- and 200-metre dashes, and the 4x100m relay. Bolt ran even better at the 2009 world championships, again winning three gold medals and lowering his own world records in the 100 and 200 to 9.58 and 19.19 seconds, respectively. But his times since have been pedestrian by the standards of the world's fastest man. At the 2011 world championships, Bolt defended his 200 world title and helped his Jamaican team break their own relay record, but he was shockingly disqualified in the 100 final for a false start, and the title went to fellow Jamaican Yohan Blake.
Expect Bolt vs. Blake to be a big storyline in London after Blake stunned Bolt to win both the 100 and 200 at this summer's Jamaican track trials. If Bolt, who won all four of his 100m races before the Jamaican trials, can vanquish his new rival, he'll become the first athlete to repeat as Olympic champ in both the 100 and 200 (Carl Lewis came within one place of doing it in 1984 and '88).
South Africa's Oscar Pistorius will make history by becoming the first amputee track athlete to compete at an Olympic Games. Last year, he was the first amputee to race in track and field's world championships, where he was eliminated in the semifinals of the 400 metres and helped the South African team reach the final of the 4x400. Nicknamed "Blade Runner" for the shape of his prosthetic racing legs, Pistorius has generated considerable controversy in the track community, where some feel his carbon fibre legs give him an advantage because they return energy more efficiently than those of able-bodied athletes. Pistorius also raised eyebrows when the South African team added him to its roster for the individual 400 metres at the Olympics, even though he failed to meet its pre-determined qualifying time. Pistorius had already qualified for the 4x400 realy squad.
Canadian Medal Outlook
Three medals was Athletics Canada’s official goal, but one medal looks like it could be a high-end estimate after Priscilla Lopes-Schliep — a fringe podium contender anyway as she was struggling to recapture her form after giving birth last year — failed to qualify after a poor race at the Canadian trials. Shot putter Dylan Armstrong is easily Canada's strongest medal candidate, but his podium chances are being overstated. Seven men this outdoor season have throw farther than his best toss, and bookies have him installed as only the No. 4 favourite. On the women's side, Jessica Zelinka has an outside shot in the heptathlon and Nikkita Holder and Phylicia George are longshots in the 100-metre hurdles.