Athletics at the 2020 Summer Olympics were held during the last ten days of the Games. They were due to be held from 31 July – 9 August 2020, at the

Olympic Stadium ''Olympic Stadium'' is the name usually given to the main stadium of an Olympic Games. An Olympic stadium is the site of the opening and closing ceremonies. Many, though not all, of these venues actually contain the words ''Olympic Stadium'' as ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

, Japan. Due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

, the games were postponed to 2021, with the track and field events set for 30 July – 8 August. The sport of athletics at these Games was split into three distinct sets of events:

track and field Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping eve ...

events, remaining in Tokyo, and

road running Road running is the sport of running on a measured course over an established road. This differs from track and field on a regular track and cross country running over natural terrain. These events are usually classified as long-distance ...

events and

racewalking Racewalking, or race walking, is a long-distance discipline within the sport of athletics. Although a foot race, it is different from running in that one foot must appear to be in contact with the ground at all times. Race judges carefully asse ...

events, moved to

Sapporo ( ain, サッ・ポロ・ペッ, Satporopet, lit=Dry, Great River) is a city in Japan. It is the largest city north of Tokyo and the largest city on Hokkaido, the northernmost main island of the country. It ranks as the fifth most populous cit ...

. A total of 48 events were held, one more than in 2016, with the addition of a mixed relay event.

Olympic stadium and venues

Road events (marathons and racewalks) will take place at

Odori Park is a park located in the heart of Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. means "large street" in Japanese. It stretches east to west through Nishi 1 chōme, Ōdōri to Nishi 12 chōme, Ōdōri ("Nishi" means west, and "chōme" is a block in Japanese), and d ...

, but the

National Stadium Many countries have a national sport stadium, which typically serves as the primary or exclusive home for one or more of a country's national representative sports teams. The term is most often used in reference to an association football stadiu ...

, which will be known as the Olympic Stadium during the games, completely rebuilt and inaugurated on 21 December 2019, will be the venue of all the

events. Italian company Mondo equipped the stadium with a new track, a Mondotrack WS surface which was given a seal of approval with a

World Athletics World Athletics, formerly known as the International Amateur Athletic Federation (from 1912 to 2001) and International Association of Athletics Federations (from 2001 to 2019, both abbreviated as the IAAF) is the international governing body fo ...

"Class 1 certificate" in December 2019. The Mondotrack WS surface in Tokyo's National Stadium is an improved version of the product that was provided and installed for the 2016 Summer Games in Rio.

is the traditional venue of

Hokkaido Marathon The Hokkaido Marathon held in Sapporo, Hokkaidō, Japan, is one of the prominent marathon races of the year. The staging area as well as both the start and finish lines are in Odori Park starting between Nishi 3-chome and Nishi 4-chome and the fi ...

. From the 2012 edition of the race, the start of the race was moved from

Nakajima Park is a city park in Chūō-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. The park has a lake, two streams, a museum, a concert hall, an observatory, a historical building housing a tea shop, and several lawns and forests. At the south end, there are two shrines. ...

to Odori Park.

, which hosted the

1972 Winter Olympics The 1972 Winter Olympics, officially the and commonly known as Sapporo 1972 ( ja, 札幌1972), was a winter multi-sport event held from February 3 to 13, 1972, in Sapporo, Japan. It was the first Winter Olympic Games to take place outside Euro ...

, lies 800 km from Tokyo, but was named as the venue for the Olympic marathons and racewalking in October 2019. This decision, taken before COVID-19

crisis A crisis ( : crises; : critical) is either any event or period that will (or might) lead to an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, or all of society. Crises are negative changes in the human or environmental affair ...

, was made due to fears about high temperatures in Tokyo. Odori Park will be the start and the arrival for both marathons. Its route features a large loop which is about the length of a

half-marathon A half marathon is a road running event of —half the distance of a marathon. It is common for a half marathon event to be held concurrently with a marathon or a 5K race, using almost the same course with a late start, an early finish or shortcut ...

(20 km), followed by a second smaller loop (10 km) which was completed twice.

Schedule

Apart from the race walks and marathon, nine track and field events will hold finals in the morning session to ensure that they receive maximum visibility for the sport across all time zones. On 16 October 2019, the IOC announced that there were plans to re-locate the marathon and racewalking events to

due to heat concerns. The plans were made official on 1 November 2019 after Tokyo Governor

Yuriko Koike is a Japanese politician who currently serves as the Governor of Tokyo since 2016. She graduated from the American University in Cairo in 1976 and was a member of the House of Representatives of Japan from 1993 until 2016, when she resigned to ...

accepted the IOC's decision, despite her belief that the events should have remained in Tokyo.

Qualification

The 2020 athletics qualifying system for individual events was fundamentally different from previous versions. Instead of being only based on set qualifying standards, the new qualifying system is also based on

IAAF World Rankings The World Athletics Rankings are an individual athlete ranking system for the sport of athletics, managed by World Athletics. It is used to establish the number one athlete within an athletics event and to partially determine qualification into th ...

. Qualifying standards provided an alternate pathway, but are to be set high enough that only exceptional performances will meet them. Maximum entries per event were set (unlike previous years where entries were based on how many athletes met the qualifying standard), with the world rankings being used to fill the quota after the standards-based entrants and universality entrants are set. On 2 June 2021, Sebastian Coe, president of

, declared that "our tracking suggests that about 70 percent of athletes in most events will qualify by entry standard. This is above the 50 percent rate we aimed for in devising the system, but we believe this is due to the extended qualifying period created after the postponement of the Olympic Games from 2020 to 2021." For relays, the qualification is somewhat similar to previous years. Eight teams will be selected through the results at the

2019 World Championships in Athletics The 2019 IAAF World Athletics Championships () was the seventeenth edition of the biennial, global athletics competition organised by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), since renamed World Athletics. It was held betw ...

, then adding the finalists of

2021 World Athletics Relays The 2021 World Athletics Relays have been held in Chorzów, Poland from 1 to 2 May 2021. Schedule The program has undergone some changes, due to the lack of participants some preliminary rounds have in fact been canceled. Winne ...

if different ones and some more selected through top lists' rankings, up to 16 teams by event.

Record figures

3 world records and 12

Olympic records Olympic records are the best performances in a specific event in that event's history in either the Summer Olympic Games or the Winter Olympic Games, including: * Archery (list) * Alpine skiing (records recognized only by FIS) * Athletics (list) ...

were set. 28 continental (area) records were set along with 151 national ones. According to the international governing body for the sport of athletics,

, their performance ranking system concludes that the 2020 Olympic Games were the "highest quality major event in history".

Medal summary

Medal table

;Key

Men

* Indicates the athlete only competed in the preliminary heats and received medals. * On 18 February 2022 team of Great Britain was disqualified for doping use and officially stripped of the silver medal. Medals have not yet been reallocated.

Women

* Indicates the athlete only competed in the preliminary heats and received medals.

Mixed

* Indicates the athlete only competed in the preliminary heats and received medals.

Competitors

Placing table

The Placing table assigns points to the top eight athletes in the final, with eight points to first place, seven to second place, and so on until one point for eighth place. Teams or athletes that did not finish or were disqualified do not receive points.

References

External links

Results book
{{DEFAULTSORT:Athletics At The 2020 Summer Olympics

2020 2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global social and economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, worldwide lockdowns and the largest economic recession since the Great Depression in t ...

2020 Summer Olympics events Olympics International athletics competitions hosted by Japan 2020 Olympics