Athletics (sport) - Culture and Media

Culture and Media

Athletics, and its athletes in particular, has been artistically depicted since ancient times – one of the surviving instances include runners and high jumpers in the motifs of Ancient Egyptian tombs dating from 2250 BC. Athletics was much respected in Ancient Greece and the events within the ancient pentathlon provided inspiration for large statues such as the Discobolus and Discophoros, and for motifs on countless vase and pottery works. Aristotle discussed the significance of the pentathlon in his treatise Rhetoric and reflected on the athlete aesthetic of the period: "a body capable of enduring all efforts, either of the racecourse or of bodily strength...This is why the athletes in the pentathlon are most beautiful".

Films about athletics are overwhelmingly focused on running events: the 1962 film The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (based on the book of the same name) explores cross country running as a means of escape. Chariots of Fire, perhaps one of the most well-known athletics films, is a fictionalised account of Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams's chase for sprint gold medals at the 1924 Olympics. Track and field has been the subject of American films such as Personal Best (1981) and Across the Tracks (1991). Biopics are found within the genre, including Prefontaine (regarding Steve Prefontaine) and Jim Thorpe – All-American (1951) featuring Burt Lancaster as Thorpe. Documentaries are also common with examples such as 2007 film Spirit of the Marathon, which follows runners' preparations for the 2005 Chicago Marathon.

Books on the subject are predominantly non-fiction, and tend towards the forms of training manuals and historical accounts of athletics. The story of the four-minute mile has been a particularly popular subject, spawning books such as The Perfect Mile and 3:59.4: The Quest to Break the Four Minute Mile.

Athletics journalism has spawned a number of dedicated periodicals including Athletics Weekly and Race Walking Record, both of which were first published in England in the early 1940s, and Track & Field News which was first published in the United States in 1948. Runner's World has been in print since 1966 and the Track & Field Magazine of Japan (Rikujyo Kyogi Magazine) is another long-running publication.

Athletics events have been selected as a main motif in numerous collectors' coins. One of the recent samples is the €10 Greek Running commemorative coin, minted in 2003 to commemorate the 2004 Summer Olympics. In the obverse of the coin, a modern athlete figure appears in the foreground, shown in the starting position, while in the background two ancient runners are carved in a manner that gives the appearance of a coin that is "worn" by time. This scene originally appeared on a black-figure vase of the 6th century BC.