Cross country running at the 1924 Olympic Games, and the women's 400m hurdles at the 2021 Games (© Getty Images)
In just a few days’ time, Paris will host the Olympics for the third time, exactly 100 years after the French capital last staged the Games.
Much has happened in the sport over the past 10 decades, so in this mini series leading into this year’s Games, we’ll reflect on some of the bigger developments in athletics between 1924 and 2024, starting with a look at how the programme of athletics events has evolved.
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At the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, there were 27 athletics events – all for men only. Women were not admitted into the Olympic track and field arena until the 1928 Games in Amsterdam.
The 2024 Olympics in the French capital will feature 23 disciplines for women and 23 for men, plus (for the second time) a mixed 4x400m relay and (for the first time) a mixed marathon race walk relay.
Four events that appeared on the programme in Paris a century ago have since been dropped from the Olympic athletics schedule: the cross country individual and team competitions (which were held together in the same race), the 3000m team race, the 10,000m race walk and the pentathlon.
• Explore more of the sport's history in the Museum of World Athletics
Paavo Nurmi collected three of his record five gold medals in those now-discontinued events.
The legendary Finn was one of 38 starters in the 10,000m cross country race, which took place in stifling temperatures of 45C. The field also had to contend with noxious fumes from an industrial chimney on the banks of the Seine on cobbled paths covered in knee-high thistles and weeds that were described by one competitor as “like a disused brickyard”.
Paavo Nurmi leads the cross country run at the 1924 Olympic Games (© Getty Images)
Only 15 men finished and several were taken to hospital. Just two days after winning the 1500m and 5000m finals in the space of an hour, Nurmi emerged a serene and untroubled victor, one minute and 24 seconds clear of his compatriot and rival Ville Ritola. He also led his country to team gold.
The following day, Nurmi was back on the track at Stade Colombes for his seventh race in six days, collecting gold medal number five as he led Finland to victory in the 3000m team race, finishing eight seconds ahead of Ritola.
Both of those events were dropped from the Olympic programme thereafter – as was the pentathlon (for men).
Robert LeGendre sets a long jump record within the pentathlon at the 1924 Olympics (© AFP / Getty Images)
Unlike the decathlon, the five-event contest was decided according to placement points across the disciplines of long jump, javelin, 200m, discus and 1500m.
Eero Lehtonen retained the title he had claimed in Antwerp four years previously – like Nurmi and Ritola, who won the 10,000m and 3000m steeplechase, part of a formidable Finnish squad that won 10 of the 27 track events in Paris (just two fewer than the mighty USA).
The highlight of the pentathlon competition was the 7.77m long jump world record achieved by the eventual bronze medallist Robert LeGendre of the US.
His performance was vastly superior to the 7.44m with which his teammate William DeHart Hubbard took gold in the long jump final the following day. Hubbard, the first black athlete to win an individual Olympic gold medal, claimed the world record with a leap of 7.89m at the NCAA Championships in Chicago a year later.
The men's 400m hurdles at the 1924 Olympic Games (© AFP / Getty Images)
There have been changes to rules and regulations too.
Morgan Taylor of the US won the gold medal in the 400m hurdles in Paris in 1924. His time, 52.6, was 1.4 quicker than the world record but was deemed invalid for record purposes because he had knocked over one of the hurdles.
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics
