title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: The signing of the Non-Aggression Pact in Moscow on 23 August 1939 was the crowning achievement of Ribbentrop's career. He flew to Moscow, where, over the course of a thirteen-hour visit, Ribbentrop signed both the Non-Aggression Pact and the secret protocols, which partitioned much of Eastern Europe between the Soviets and the Germans. Ribbentrop had expected to see only the Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov and was most surprised to be holding talks with Joseph Stalin himself. During his trip to Moscow, Ribbentrop's talks with Stalin and Molotov proceeded very cordially and efficiently with the exception of the question of Latvia, which Hitler had instructed Ribbentrop to try to claim for Germany. Ribbentrop had been instructed to claim the Daugava as the future boundary between the Greater Germanic Reich and the Soviet Union, but had also been ordered to grant extensive concessions to Stalin. When Stalin claimed Latvia for the Soviet Union, Ribbentrop was forced to telephone Berlin for permission from Hitler to concede Latvia to the Soviets. After finishing his talks with Stalin and Molotov, Ribbentrop, at a dinner with the Soviet leaders, launched into a lengthy diatribe against the British Empire, with frequent interjections of approval from Stalin, and exchanged toasts with Stalin in honour of German-Soviet friendship. For a brief moment in August 1939, Ribbentrop convinced Hitler that the Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviet Union would cause the fall of the Chamberlain government and lead to a new British government that would abandon the Poles to their fate. Ribbentrop argued that with Soviet economic support, especially in the form of oil, Germany was now immune to the effects of a British naval blockade and so the British would never take on Germany. On 23 August 1939, at a secret meeting of the "Reich"'s top military leadership at the Berghof, Hitler argued that neither Britain nor France would go to war for Poland without the Soviet Union, and fixed "X-Day", the date for the invasion of Poland, for 26 August. Hitler added, "My only fear is that at the last moment some "Schweinehund" will make a proposal for mediation". Unlike Hitler, who saw the Non-Aggression Pact as merely a pragmatic device forced on him by circumstances, the refusal of Britain or Poland to play the roles that Hitler had allocated to them, Ribbentrop regarded the Non-Aggression Pact as integral to his anti-British policy.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: The signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939 not only won Germany an informal alliance with the Soviet Union but also neutralized Anglo-French attempts to win Turkey to the "peace front". The Turks always believed that it was essential to have the Soviet Union as an ally to counter Germany, and the signing of the pact undercut completely the assumptions behind Turkish security policy. The Anglo-French effort to include the Balkans into the "peace front" had always rested on the assumption that the cornerstone of the "peace front" in the Balkans was to be Turkey, the regional superpower. Because the Balkans were rich in raw materials such as iron, zinc and oil, which could help Germany survive a British blockade, it was viewed as highly important by the Allies to keep German influence in the Balkans to a minimum. That was the principal motivation behind efforts to link British promises to support Turkey in the event of an Italian attack, in exchange for Turkish promises to help defend Romania from a German attack. British and French leaders believed that the deterrent value of the "peace front" could be increased if Turkey were a member, and the Turkish Straits were open to Allied ships. That would allow the Allies to send troops and supplies to Romania over the Black Sea and through Romania to Poland.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: On 25 August 1939, Ribbentrop's influence with Hitler wavered for a moment when the news reached Berlin of the ratification of the Anglo-Polish military alliance and a personal message from Mussolini that told Hitler that Italy would dishonour the Pact of Steel if Germany attacked Poland. This was especially damaging to Ribbentrop, as he always assured Hitler, "Italy's attitude is determined by the Rome-Berlin Axis". As a result of the message from Rome and the ratification of the Anglo-Polish treaty, Hitler cancelled the invasion of Poland planned for 26 August but ordered it held back until 1 September to give Germany some time to break up the unfavourable international alignment. Though Ribbentrop continued to argue that Britain and France were bluffing, both he and Hitler were prepared, as a last resort, to risk a general war by invading Poland. Because of Ribbentrop's firmly-held views that Britain was Germany's most dangerous enemy and that an Anglo-German war was inevitable, it scarcely mattered to him when his much-desired war with Britain came. The Greek historian Aristotle Kaillis wrote that it was Ribbentrop's influence with Hitler and his insistence that the Western powers would fail to go to war for Poland that was the most important reason that Hitler did not cancel "Fall Weiß", the German invasion of Poland, altogether, instead of only postponing "X-day" for six days. Ribbentrop told Hitler that his sources showed that Britain would not be militarily prepared to take on Germany at the earliest until 1940 or more probably 1941, so that meant that the British were bluffing. Even if the British were serious in their warnings of war, Ribbentrop took the view that since a war with Britain was inevitable, the risk of a war with Britain was acceptable and so he argued that Germany should not shy away from such challenges.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: On 27 August 1939, Chamberlain sent a letter to Hitler that was intended to counteract reports Chamberlain had heard from intelligence sources in Berlin that Ribbentrop had convinced Hitler that the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact would ensure that Britain would abandon Poland. In his letter, Chamberlain wrote:


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: On the night of 30–31 August 1939, Ribbentrop had an extremely heated exchange with British Ambassador Sir Nevile Henderson, who objected to Ribbentrop's demand, given at about midnight, that if a Polish plenipotentiary did not arrive in Berlin that night to discuss the German "final offer", the responsibility for the outbreak of war would not rest on the "Reich". Henderson stated that the terms of the German "final offer" were very reasonable but argued that Ribbentrop's time limit for Polish acceptance of the "final offer" was most unreasonable, and he also demanded to know why Ribbentrop insisted upon seeing a special Polish plenipotentiary and could not present the "final offer" to Ambassador Józef Lipski or provide a written copy of the "final offer". The Henderson–Ribbentrop meeting became so tense that the two men almost came to blows. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg described the Henderson–Ribbentrop meeting:


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: When Joachim von Ribbentrop refused to give a copy of the German demands to the British Ambassador [Henderson] at midnight of 30–31 August 1939, the two almost came to blows. Ambassador Henderson, who had long advocated concessions to Germany, recognized that here was a deliberately conceived alibi the German government had prepared for a war it was determined to start. No wonder Henderson was angry; von Ribbentrop on the other hand could see war ahead and went home beaming.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: As intended by Ribbentrop, the narrow time limit for acceptance of the "final offer" made it impossible for the British government to contact the Polish government in time about the German offer, let alone for the Poles to arrange for a Polish plenipotentiary envoy to arrive in Berlin that night, thereby allowing Ribbentrop to claim that the Poles had rejected the German "final offer". As it was, a special meeting of the British cabinet called to consider the "final offer" and declined to pass on the message to Warsaw under the grounds that it was not a serious proposal on the part of Berlin. The "rejection" of the German proposal was one of the pretexts used for the German aggression against Poland on 1 September 1939. The British historian D.C. Watt wrote, "Two hours later, Berlin Radio broadcast the sixteen points, adding that Poland had rejected them. Thanks to Ribbentrop, they had never even seen them". On 31 August, Ribbentrop met with Ambassador Attolico to tell him that Poland's "rejection" of the "generous" German 16-point peace plan meant that Germany had no interest in Mussolini's offer to call a conference about the status of Danzig. Besides the Polish "rejection" of the German "final offer", the aggression against Poland was justified with the Gleiwitz incident and other SS-staged incidents on the German–Polish border.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: As soon as the news broke in the morning of 1 September 1939 that Germany had invaded Poland, Mussolini launched another desperate peace mediation plan intended to stop the German–Polish war from becoming a world war. Mussolini's motives were in no way altruistic. Instead, he was motivated entirely by a wish to escape the self-imposed trap of the Pact of Steel, which had obligated Italy to go to war while the country was entirely unprepared. If he suffered the humiliation of having to declare neutrality, it would make him appear cowardly. French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet, acting on his own initiative, told the Italian Ambassador to France, Baron Raffaele Guariglia, that France had accepted Mussolini's peace plan. Bonnet had Havas issue a statement at midnight on 1 September: "The French government has today, as have several other Governments, received an Italian proposal looking to the resolution of Europe's difficulties. After due consideration, the French government has given a 'positive response'". Though the French and the Italians were serious about Mussolini's peace plan, which called for an immediate ceasefire and a four-power conference in the manner of the Munich conference of 1938 to consider Poland's borders, British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax stated that unless the Germans withdrew from Poland immediately, Britain would not attend the proposed conference. Ribbentrop finally scuttled Mussolini's peace plan by stating that Germany had no interest in a ceasefire, a withdrawal from Poland or attending the proposed peace conference.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: On the morning of 3 September 1939, Chamberlain followed through with his threat of a British declaration of war if Germany attacked Poland, a visibly-shocked Hitler asked Ribbentrop "Now what?", a question to which Ribbentrop had no answer except to state that there would be a "similar message" forthcoming from French Ambassador Robert Coulondre, who arrived later that afternoon to present the French declaration of war. Weizsäcker later recalled, "On 3 Sept., when the British and French declared war, Hitler was surprised, after all, and was to begin with, at a loss". The British historian Richard Overy wrote that what Hitler thought he was starting in September 1939 was only a local war between Germany and Poland and that his decision to do so was largely based on a vast underestimate of the risks of a general war. In effect, Ribbentrop's influence made Hitler go to war in 1939 with the country he wanted as his ally, the United Kingdom, as his enemy and the country he wanted as his enemy, the Soviet Union, as his ally.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: After the outbreak of World War II, Ribbentrop spent most of the Polish campaign travelling with Hitler. On 27 September 1939, Ribbentrop made a second visit to Moscow. There, at meetings with the Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov and Joseph Stalin, he was forced to agree to revising the Secret Protocols of the Non-Aggression Pact in the Soviet Union's favour, most notably agreeing to Stalin's demand for Lithuania to go to the Soviet Union. The imposition of the British blockade had made the "Reich" highly dependent upon Soviet economic support, which placed Stalin in a strong negotiating position with Ribbentrop. On 1 March 1940, Ribbentrop received Sumner Welles, the American Under-Secretary of State, who was on a peace mission for US President Franklin Roosevelt, and did his best to abuse his American guest. Welles asked Ribbentrop under what terms Germany might be willing to negotiate a compromise peace, before the Phoney War became a real war. Ribbentrop told Welles that only a total German victory "could give us the peace we want". Welles reported to Roosevelt that Ribbentrop had a "completely closed and very stupid mind". On 10 March 1940, Ribbentrop visited Rome to meet with Mussolini, who promised him that Italy would soon enter the war. For his one-day Italian trip, Ribbentrop was accompanied by a staff of thirty-five, including a gymnastics coach, a masseur, a doctor, two hairdressers and various legal and economic experts from the Foreign Office. After the Italo-German summit at the Brenner Pass on 18 March 1940, which was attended by Hitler and Mussolini, Count Ciano wrote in his diary: "Everyone in Rome dislikes Ribbentrop". On 7 May 1940, Ribbentrop founded a new section of the Foreign Office, the "Abteilung Deutschland" (Department of Internal German Affairs), under Martin Luther, to which was assigned the responsibility for all antisemitic affairs. On 10 May 1940, Ribbentrop summoned the Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg ambassadors to present them with notes justifying the German invasion of their countries several hours after the Germans had invaded those nations. Much to Ribbentrop's fury, someone leaked the plans for the German invasion to the Dutch embassy in Berlin, which led Ribbentrop to devote the next several months to an investigation aimed at identifying the leaker. The investigation tore apart the agency, as colleagues were encouraged to denounce each other, and was ultimately unsuccessful.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: In early June 1940, when Mussolini informed Hitler that he would finally enter the war on 10 June 1940, Hitler was most dismissive, in private calling Mussolini a cowardly opportunist who broke the terms of the Pact of Steel in September 1939 when the going looked rough, and was entering the war in June 1940 only after it was clear that France was beaten and it appeared that Britain would soon make peace. Ribbentrop shared Hitler's assessment of the Italians but welcomed Italy coming into war. In part, that seemed to affirm the importance of the Pact of Steel, which Ribbentrop had negotiated, and in addition, with Italy now an ally, the Foreign Office had more to do. Ribbentrop championed the so-called Madagascar Plan in June 1940 to deport all of Europe's Jews to Madagascar after the presumed imminent defeat of Britain.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: Ribbentrop, a Francophile, argued that Germany should allow Vichy France a limited degree of independence within a binding Franco-German partnership. To that end, Ribbentrop appointed a colleague from the "Dienststelle", Otto Abetz, as Ambassador to France with instructions to promote the political career of Pierre Laval, whom Ribbentrop had decided to be the French politician most favourable to Germany. The Foreign Office's influence in France varied, as there were many other agencies competing for power there. But in general, from late 1943 to mid-1944, the Foreign Office was second only to the SS in terms of power in France.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: From the latter half of 1937, Ribbentrop had championed the idea of an alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan that would partition the British Empire among them. After signing the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact, Ribbentrop expanded on this idea for an Axis alliance to include the Soviet Union to form a Eurasian bloc that would destroy maritime states such as Britain. The German historian Klaus Hildebrand argued that besides Hitler's foreign policy programme, there were three other factions within the Nazi Party who had alternative foreign policy programmes, whom Hildebrand designated the agrarians, the revolutionary socialists, and the Wilhelmine Imperialists. Another German diplomatic historian, Wolfgang Michalka argued that there was a fourth alternative to the Nazi foreign policy programme, and that was Ribbentrop's concept of a Eurasian bloc comprising the four totalitarian states of Germany, the Soviet Union, Italy and Japan. Unlike the other factions, Ribbentrop's foreign policy programme was the only one that Hitler allowed to be executed during the years 1939–41, though it was more due to the temporary bankruptcy of Hitler's own foreign policy programme that he had laid down in "Mein Kampf" and "Zweites Buch" following the failure to achieve an alliance with Britain, than to a genuine change of mind. Ribbentrop's foreign policy conceptions differed from Hitler's in that Ribbentrop's concept of international relations owed more to the traditional Wilhelmine "Machtpolitik" than to Hitler's racist and Social Darwinist vision of different "races" locked in a merciless and endless struggle over "Lebensraum". The different foreign-policy conceptions held by Hitler and Ribbentrop were illustrated in their reaction to the Fall of Singapore in 1942: Ribbentrop wanted this great British defeat to be a day of celebration in Germany, whereas Hitler forbade any celebrations on the grounds that Singapore represented a sad day for the principles of white supremacy. Another area of difference was Ribbentrop's obsessive hatred for Britain – which he saw as the main enemy – and view of the Soviet Union as an important ally in the anti-British struggle. Hitler saw the alliance with the Soviet Union as only tactical, and was nowhere as anti-British as his Foreign Minister.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: In August 1940, Ribbentrop oversaw the Second Vienna Award, which saw about 40% of the Transylvania region of Romania returned to Hungary. The decision to award so much of Romania to the Hungarians was Hitler's, as Ribbentrop himself spent most of the Vienna conference loudly attacking the Hungarian delegation for their coolness towards attacking Czechoslovakia in 1938 and then demanding more than their fair share of the spoils. When Ribbentrop finally got around to announcing his decision, the Hungarian delegation, which had expected Ribbentrop to rule in favour of Romania, broke out in cheers, while the Romanian foreign minister Mihail Manoilescu fainted.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: In late 1940, Ribbentrop made a sustained but unsuccessful effort to have Francoist Spain enter the war on the Axis side. During his talks with the Spanish foreign minister, Ramón Serrano Suñer, Ribbentrop affronted Suñer with his tactless behaviour, especially his suggestion that Spain cede the Canary Islands to Germany. An angry Suñer replied that he would rather see the Canaries sink into the Atlantic than cede an inch of Spanish territory. An area in which Ribbentrop enjoyed more success arose in September 1940, when he had the Far Eastern agent of the "Dienststelle Ribbentrop", Dr. Heinrich Georg Stahmer, start negotiations with the Japanese foreign minister, Yōsuke Matsuoka, for an anti-American alliance. The result of these talks was the signing in Berlin on 27 September 1940 of the Tripartite Pact by Ribbentrop, Count Ciano, and Japanese Ambassador Saburō Kurusu.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: In October 1940, "Gauleiters" Josef Bürckel and Robert Wagner oversaw the near total expulsion of the Jews into the unoccupied zone libre of Vichy France; they deported them not only from the parts of Alsace-Lorraine that had been annexed to the "Reich", but also from their "Gaue" as well. Ribbentrop treated in a "most dilatory fashion" the ensuing complaints by the Vichy French government over the expulsions.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: In November 1940, during the visit of the Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov to Berlin, Ribbentrop tried hard to get the Soviet Union to sign the Tripartite Pact. Ribbentrop argued that the Soviets and Germans shared a common enemy in the form of the British Empire, and as such, it was in the best interests of the Kremlin to enter the war on the Axis side. He proposed that, after the defeat of Britain, they could carve up the territory in the following way: the Soviet Union would have India and the Middle East, Italy the Mediterranean area, Japan the British possessions in the Far East (presuming of course that Japan would enter the war), and Germany would take central Africa and Britain. Molotov was open to the idea of the Soviet Union entering the war on the Axis side, but demanded as the price of entry into the war that Germany recognise Finland, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Hungary and Yugoslavia as within the exclusive Soviet sphere of influence. Ribbentrop's efforts to persuade Molotov to abandon his demands about Europe as the price of a Soviet alliance with Germany were entirely unsuccessful. After Molotov left Berlin, the Soviet Union indicated that it wished to sign the Tripartite Pact and enter the war on the Axis side. Though Ribbentrop was all for taking Stalin's offer, Hitler by this point had decided that he wanted to attack the Soviet Union. The German–Soviet Axis talks led nowhere.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: As World War II continued, Ribbentrop's once-friendly relations with the SS became increasingly strained. In January 1941, the nadir of the relations between the SS and the Foreign Office was reached when the Iron Guard attempted a coup in Romania. Ribbentrop supported Marshal Ion Antonescu's government and Heinrich Himmler supported the Iron Guard. In the aftermath of the failed coup in Bucharest, the Foreign Office assembled evidence that the SD had backed the coup, which led Ribbentrop to restrict sharply the powers of the SD police attachés. Since October 1939 they had operated largely independently of the German embassies at which they had been stationed. In early 1941, Ribbentrop appointed an assemblage of SA men to German embassies in eastern Europe, with Manfred Freiherr von Killinger dispatched to Romania, Siegfried Kasche to Croatia, Adolf-Heinz Beckerle to Bulgaria, Dietrich von Jagow to Hungary, and Hans Ludin to Slovakia. The major qualifications of all these men, none of whom had previously held a diplomatic position before, were that they were close friends of Luther and helped to enable a split in the SS (the traditional rivalry between the SS and SA was still running strong).


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: In March 1941, Japan's Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka, a Germanophile, visited Berlin. On 29 March 1941, during a conversation with Matsuoka, Ribbentrop, as instructed by Hitler, told the Japanese nothing about the upcoming Operation Barbarossa, as Hitler believed that he could defeat the Soviet Union on his own and preferred that the Japanese attack Britain instead. Hitler did not wish for any information that might lead the Japanese into attacking the Soviet Union to reach their ears. Ribbentrop tried to convince Matsuoka to urge the government in Tokyo to attack the great British naval base at Singapore, claiming the Royal Navy was too weak to retaliate due to its involvement in the Battle of the Atlantic. Matsuoka responded that preparations to occupy Singapore were under way.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: In late 1940 and early 1941, Ribbentrop strongly pressured the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to sign the Tripartite Pact, despite advice from the German Legation in Belgrade that such an action would probably lead to the overthrow of Crown Prince Paul, the Yugoslav Regent. Ribbentrop's intention was to gain transit rights through the country that would allow the Germans to invade Greece. On 25 March 1941, Yugoslavia reluctantly signed the Tripartite Pact; the next day the Yugoslav military overthrew Prince Paul in a bloodless coup. When Hitler ordered the invasion of Yugoslavia, Ribbentrop was opposed, because he thought the Foreign Office was likely to be excluded from ruling occupied Yugoslavia. As Hitler was displeased with Ribbentrop over his opposition to the invasion, the minister took to his bed for the next couple of days. When Ribbentrop recovered, he sought a chance to increase his agency's influence by giving Croatia independence. Ribbentrop chose the Ustaše to rule Croatia. He had Edmund Veesenmayer successfully conclude talks in April 1941 with General Slavko Kvaternik of the Ustaše on having his party rule Croatia after the German invasion. Reflecting his displeasure with the German Legation in Belgrade, which had advised against pushing Yugoslavia to sign the Tripartite Pact, Ribbentrop refused to have the German Legation withdrawn in advance before Germany bombed Belgrade on 6 April 1941. The staff was left to survive the fire-bombing as best it could.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: Ribbentrop liked and admired Joseph Stalin and was opposed to the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. He passed a word to a Soviet diplomat: "Please tell Stalin I was against this war, and that I know it will bring great misfortune to Germany." When it came to time for Ribbentrop to present the German declaration of war on 22 June 1941 to the Soviet Ambassador, General Vladimir Dekanozov, the interpreter Paul Schmidt described the scene:


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: When Dekanozov finally appeared, Ribbentrop read out a short statement saying that the Reich had been forced into "military countermeasures" because of an alleged Soviet plan to attack Germany in July 1941. Ribbentrop did not present a declaration of war to General Dekanozov, confining himself to reading the statement about Germany being forced to take "military countermeasures".


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: Despite his opposition to Operation Barbarossa and a preference to concentrate against Britain, Ribbentrop began a sustained effort on 28 June 1941, without consulting Hitler, to have Japan attack the Soviet Union. But Ribbentrop's motives in seeking to have Japan enter the war were more anti-British than anti-Soviet. On 10 July 1941 Ribbentrop ordered General Eugen Ott, the German Ambassador to Japan to:


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: As part of his efforts to bring Japan into Barbarossa, on 1 July 1941, Ribbentrop had Germany break off diplomatic relations with Chiang Kai-shek and recognized the Japanese-puppet government of Wang Jingwei as China's legitimate rulers. Ribbentrop hoped that recognizing Wang would be seen as a coup that might add to the prestige of the pro-German Japanese Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka, who was opposed to opening American-Japanese talks. Despite Ribbentrop's best efforts, Matsuoka was sacked as foreign minister later in July 1941, and the Japanese-American talks began.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: After the war, Ribbentrop was found to have had culpability in the Holocaust based on his efforts to persuade the leaders of Nazi puppet states and other Axis powers to deport Jews to the Nazi extermination camps. In August 1941, when the question of whether to deport foreign Jews living in Germany arose, Ribbentrop argued against deportation as a way of maximizing the Foreign Office's influence. To deport foreign Jews living in the Reich, Ribbentrop had Luther negotiate agreements with the governments of Romania, Slovakia and Croatia to allow Jews holding citizenship of those states to be deported. In September 1941, the Reich Plenipotentiary for Nazi-occupied Serbia, Felix Benzler, reported to Ribbentrop that the SS had arrested 8,000 Serbian Jews, whom they were planning to execute en masse. He asked for permission to try to stop the massacre. Ribbentrop assigned the question to Luther, who ordered Benzler to co-operate fully in the massacre.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: In late 1941, Ribbentrop worked for the failure of the Japanese-American talks in Washington and for Japan to attack the United States. In October 1941 Ribbentrop ordered Eugen Ott, the German ambassador to Japan, to start applying pressure on the Japanese to attack the Americans as soon as possible. Ribbentrop argued to Hitler that a war between the United States and Germany was inevitable given the extent of American aid to Britain and the increasingly frequent "incidents" in the North Atlantic between U-boats and American warships guarding convoys to Britain. He said that having such a war start with a Japanese attack on the United States was the best way to begin it. Ribbentrop told Hitler that because of his four years in Canada and the United States before 1914, he was an expert on all things American; he thought that the United States was not a serious military power. On 4 December 1941, the Japanese Ambassador General Hiroshi Ōshima told Ribbentrop that Japan was on the verge of war with the United States. In turn, Ribbentrop promised that Germany would join the war against the Americans. On 7 December 1941, Ribbentrop was jubilant at the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and did his utmost to support a declaration of war on the United States. He delivered the official declaration to the American "Chargé d'Affaires" Leland B. Morris on 11 December 1941. In early 1942, following American entry into war, the United States successfully pressured all of the Latin American states, except for Argentina and Chile, to declare war on Germany. Ribbentrop considered the acceptance of declarations of war from small states such as Costa Rica and Ecuador to be deeply humiliating, and he refused to see any of the Latin American ambassadors. He had Weizsäcker accept their declarations of war instead.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: In April 1942, as part of a diplomatic counterpart to Case Blue, a military operation in southern Russia, Ribbentrop assembled a collection of anti-Soviet émigrés from the Caucasus in the Hotel Adlon in Berlin with the intention to have them declared leaders of governments-in-exile. From Ribbentrop's point of view, this had the dual benefit of ensuring popular support for the German Army as it advanced into the Caucasus and of ensuring that it was the Foreign Office that ruled the Caucasus once the Germans occupied the area. Alfred Rosenberg, the German Minister of the East, saw this as an intrusion into his area of authority, and told Hitler that the émigrés at the Hotel Adlon were "a nest of Allied agents". To Ribbentrop's disappointment, Hitler sided with Rosenberg.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: Despite the often fierce rivalry with the SS, the Foreign Office played a key role in arranging the deportations of Jews to the death camps from France (1942–44), Hungary (1944–45), Slovakia, Italy (after 1943), and the Balkans. Ribbentrop assigned all of the Holocaust-related work to Martin Luther, an old crony from the "Dienststelle" who represented the Foreign Ministry at the Wannsee Conference. In 1942, Ambassador Otto Abetz secured the deportation of 25,000 French Jews, and Ambassador Hans Ludin secured the deportation of 50,000 Slovak Jews to the death camps. Only once, in August 1942, did Ribbentrop try to restrict the deportations, but only because of jurisdictional disputes with the SS. Ribbentrop halted deportations from Romania and Croatia; in the case of the former, he was insulted because the SS were negotiating with the Romanians directly, and in the case of the latter, he learned that the SS and Luther had pressured the Italians in their zone of occupation to deport their Jews without first informing Ribbentrop. He had required being kept updated on all developments in Italo-German relations. In September 1942, after a meeting with Hitler, who was unhappy with his foreign minister's actions, Ribbentrop changed course and ordered the deportations to be resumed immediately.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: In November 1942, following Operation Torch (the British-American invasion of North Africa), Ribbentrop met with French Chief of the Government Pierre Laval in Munich. He presented Laval with an ultimatum for Germany's occupation of the French unoccupied zone and Tunisia. Ribbentrop tried unsuccessfully to arrange for the Vichy French Armistice Army in North Africa to be formally placed under German command. In December 1942, he met with the Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano, who carried Mussolini's request urging the Germans to go on the defensive in the Soviet Union in order to focus on attacking North Africa. Ribbentrop joined with Hitler in belittling Italy's war effort. During the same meeting in East Prussia with Count Ciano, Pierre Laval arrived. He quickly agreed to Hitler's and Ribbentrop's demands that he place French police under the command of more radical antisemites and transport hundreds of thousands of French workers to labor in Germany's war industry.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: Another low point in Ribbentrop's relations with the SS occurred in February 1943, when the SD backed a Luther-led internal "putsch" to oust Ribbentrop as foreign minister. Luther had become estranged from Ribbentrop because Frau Ribbentrop treated Luther as a household servant. She pushed her husband into ordering an investigation into allegations of corruption on Luther's part. Luther's "putsch" failed largely because Himmler decided that a foreign ministry headed by Luther would be a more dangerous opponent than the Ribbentrop version. At the last minute, he withdrew his support from Luther. In the aftermath of the "putsch", Luther was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: In April 1943, during a summit meeting with Hungary's Regent Miklós Horthy, Ribbentrop strongly pressed the Hungarians to deport their Jewish population to the death camps, but was unsuccessful. During their meeting, Ribbentrop declared "the Jews must either be exterminated or taken to the concentration camps. There is no other possibility".


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: As the war went on, Ribbentrop's influence waned. Because most of the world was at war with Germany, the Foreign Ministry's importance diminished as the value of diplomacy became limited. By January 1944, Germany had diplomatic relations only with Argentina, Ireland, Vichy France, the Italian Social Republic in Italy, Occupied Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Switzerland, the Holy See, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Thailand, Japan, and the Japanese puppet states of Manchukuo and the Wang Jingwei regime of China. Later that year, Argentina and Turkey severed ties with Germany; Romania and Bulgaria joined the Allies and Finland made a separate peace with the Soviet Union and declared war on Germany.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: Hitler found Ribbentrop increasingly tiresome and started to avoid him. The Foreign Minister's pleas for permission to seek peace with at least some of Germany's enemies—the Soviet Union in particular—played a role in their estrangement. As his influence declined, Ribbentrop spent his time feuding with other Nazi leaders over control of antisemitic policies to curry Hitler's favour.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: Ribbentrop suffered a major blow when many old Foreign Office diplomats participated in the 20 July 1944 "putsch" and assassination attempt on Hitler. Ribbentrop had not known of the plot, but the participation of so many current and former Foreign Ministry members reflected badly on him. Hitler felt that Ribbentrop's "bloated administration" prevented him from keeping proper tabs on his diplomats' activities. Ribbentrop worked closely with the SS, with which he had reconciled, to purge the Foreign Office of those involved in the "putsch". In the hours immediately following the assassination attempt on Hitler, Ribbentrop, Göring, Dönitz, and Mussolini were having tea with Hitler in Rastenberg when Dönitz began to rail against the failures of the Luftwaffe. Göring immediately turned the direction of the conversation to Ribbentrop, and the bankruptcy of Germany's foreign policy. "You dirty little champagne salesman! Shut your mouth!" Göring shouted, threatening to smack Ribbentrop with his marshal's baton. But Ribbentrop refused to remain silent at this disrespect. "I am still the Foreign Minister," he shouted, "and my name is "von" Ribbentrop!"


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: On 20 April 1945, Ribbentrop attended Hitler's 56th birthday party in Berlin. Three days later, Ribbentrop attempted to meet with Hitler, but was rejected with the explanation the Führer had more important things to do.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: After Hitler's suicide, Ribbentrop attempted to find a role under the new president, Karl Dönitz, but was rebuffed. He went into hiding under an assumed name (Herr Reiser) in the port city of Hamburg. On 14 June, after Germany's surrender, Ribbentrop was arrested by Sergeant Jacques Goffinet, a French citizen who had joined the 5th Special Air Service, the Belgian SAS, and was working with the British Army near Hamburg. He was found with a rambling letter addressed to the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill criticizing British foreign policy for anti-German sentiments, and blaming Britain's failure to ally with Germany before the war for the Soviet occupation of eastern Germany and the advancement of Bolshevism into central Europe.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: Ribbentrop was a defendant at the Nuremberg trials. The Allies' International Military Tribunal convicted him on four counts: crimes against peace, deliberately planning a war of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. According to the judgment, Ribbentrop was actively involved in planning the Anschluss, as well as the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland. He was also deeply involved in the "final solution"; as early as 1942 he had ordered German diplomats in Axis countries to hasten the process of sending Jews to death camps in the east. He supported the lynching of Allied airmen shot down over Germany, and helped to cover up the 1945 murder of Major-General Gustave Mesny, a French officer being held as a prisoner of war. He was held directly responsible for atrocities which took place in Denmark and Vichy France, since the top officials in those two occupied countries reported to him. Ribbentrop claimed that Hitler made all the important decisions himself, and that he had been deceived by Hitler's repeated claims of only wanting peace. The Tribunal rejected this argument, saying that given how closely involved Ribbentrop was with the execution of the war, "he could not have remained unaware of the aggressive nature of Hitler's actions." Even in prison, Ribbentrop remained loyal to Hitler: "Even with all I know, if in this cell Hitler should come to me and say 'do this!', I would still do it."


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: Gustave Gilbert, an American Army psychologist, was allowed to examine the Nazi leaders who stood trial. Among other tests, he administered a German version of the Wechsler–Bellevue IQ test. Joachim von Ribbentrop scored 129, the 10th highest among the Nazi leaders tested. At one point during the trial, a US Army interpreter asked Ernst "Freiherr" von Weizsäcker how Hitler could have promoted Ribbentrop to high office. "Freiherr" von Weizsäcker responded, "Hitler never noticed Ribbentrop's babbling because Hitler always did all the talking."


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: On 16 October 1946, Ribbentrop became the first of those sentenced to death at Nuremberg to be hanged, after Göring committed suicide just before his scheduled execution. The hangman was U.S. Master Sergeant John C. Woods. Ribbentrop was escorted up the 13 steps of the gallows and asked if he had any final words. He said: "God protect Germany. God have mercy on my soul. My final wish is that Germany should recover her unity and that, for the sake of peace, there should be understanding between East and West. I wish peace to the world." Nuremberg Prison Commandant Burton C. Andrus later recalled that Ribbentrop turned to the prison's Lutheran chaplain, Henry F. Gerecke, immediately before the hood was placed over his head and whispered, "I'll see you again." His body, like those of the other nine executed men and of the suicide Hermann Göring, was cremated at Ostfriedhof (Munich) and the ashes were scattered in the river Isar.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: In "Famous Last Words", a novel by Timothy Findley, Ribbentrop conspires with the Duke of Windsor, to kill Hitler, take over the Nazi Party and Europe. The Robert Harris novel "Fatherland" (1992) explores an alternate history where the Nazis won the war, and Ribbentrop is still the foreign minister. In Philip Roth's alternative history "The Plot Against America," Charles Lindbergh wins the presidential election of 1940 and allies the United States with Nazi Germany, Ribbentrop visits the White House as part of the two countries' new friendship.


title: Joachim von Ribbentrop

text: Joachim von Ribbentrop has been portrayed by the following actors in film, television and theatre productions:


title: Track and field

text: 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 events. Track and field is categorized under the umbrella sport of athletics, which also includes road running, cross country running and racewalking.


title: Track and field

text: The foot racing events, which include sprints, middle- and long-distance events, racewalking, and hurdling, are won by the athlete who completes it in the least time. The jumping and throwing events are won by those who achieve the greatest distance or height. Regular jumping events include long jump, triple jump, high jump, and pole vault, while the most common throwing events are shot put, javelin, discus, and hammer. There are also "combined events" or "multi events", such as the pentathlon consisting of five events, heptathlon consisting of seven events, and decathlon consisting of ten events. In these, athletes participate in a combination of track and field events. Most track and field events are individual sports with a single victor; the most prominent team events are relay races, which typically feature teams of four. Events are almost exclusively divided by gender, although both the men's and women's competitions are usually held at the same venue. Recently, “mixed” relay events have been introduced into meets, whereby two men and two women make up the four-person team. If a race has too many people to run all at once, preliminary heats will be run to narrow down the field of participants.


title: Track and field

text: Track and field is one of the oldest sports. In ancient times, it was an event held in conjunction with festivals and sports meets such as the Ancient Olympic Games in Greece. In modern times, the two most prestigious international track and field competitions are the athletics competition at the Olympic Games and the World Athletics Championships. World Athletics, formerly known as the "International Association of Athletics Federations" ("IAAF"), is the international governing body for the sport of athletics.


title: Track and field

text: Records are kept of the best performances in specific events, at world, continental, and national levels, right down to a personal level. However, if athletes are deemed to have violated the event's rules or regulations, they are disqualified from the competition and their marks are erased.


title: Track and field

text: In the United States, the term track and field may refer to other athletics events, such as cross country, the marathon, and road running, rather than strictly track-based events.


title: Track and field

text: The sport of track and field has its roots in human prehistory. Track and field style events are among the oldest of all sporting competitions, as running, jumping and throwing are natural and universal forms of human physical expression. The first recorded examples of organized track and field events at a sports festival are the Ancient Olympic Games. At the first Games in 776 BC in Olympia, Greece, only one event was contested: the stadion footrace. The scope of the Games expanded in later years to include further running competitions, but the introduction of the Ancient Olympic pentathlon marked a step towards track and field as it is recognized today—it comprised a five-event competition of the long jump, javelin throw, discus throw, stadion footrace, and wrestling.


title: Track and field

text: Track and field events were also present at the Panhellenic Games in Greece around this period, and they spread to Rome in Italy around 201 BC. After the period of Classical antiquity (in which the sport was largely Greco-Roman influenced) new track and field events began developing in parts of Northern Europe in the Middle Ages. The stone put and weight throw competitions popular among Celtic societies in Ireland and Scotland were precursors to the modern shot put and hammer throw events. One of the last track and field events to develop was the pole vault, which stemmed from competitions such as the Fierljeppen contests in the Northern European Lowlands in the 18th century.


title: Track and field

text: Discrete modern track and field competitions, separate from general sporting festivals, were first recorded in the 19th century. These were typically organised by educational institutions, military organisations and sports clubs as competitions between rival establishments. Competitions in the English public schools were conceived as human equivalents of horse racing, fox hunting and hare coursing, influenced by a Classics-rich curriculum. The Royal Shrewsbury School Hunt is the oldest running club in the world, with written records going back to 1831 and evidence that it was established by 1819. The school organised Paper Chase races in which runners followed a trail of paper shreds left by two "foxes"; even today RSSH runners are called "hounds" and a race victory is a "kill". The first definite record of Shrewsbury's (cross-country) Annual Steeplechase is in 1834, making it the oldest running race of the modern era. The school also lays claim to the oldest track and field meeting still in existence, originating in the Second Spring Meeting first documented in 1840. This featured a series of throwing and jumping events with mock horse races including the Derby Stakes, the Hurdle Race and the Trial Stakes. Runners were entered by "owners" and named as though they were horses. away and a decade later, the first Wenlock Olympian Games were held at Much Wenlock racecourse. Events at the 1851 Wenlock Games included a "half-mile foot race" (805 m) and a "leaping in distance" competition.


title: Track and field

text: In 1865, Dr William Penny Brookes of Wenlock helped set up the National Olympian Association, which held their first Olympian Games in 1866 at The Crystal Palace in London. This national event was a great success, attracting a crowd of over ten thousand people. In response, that same year the Amateur Athletic Club was formed and held a championship for "gentlemen amateurs" in an attempt to reclaim the sport for the educated elite. Ultimately the "allcomers" ethos of the NOA won through and the AAC was reconstituted as the Amateur Athletic Association in 1880, the first national body for the sport of athletics. The AAA Championships, the "de facto" British national championships despite being for England only, have been held annually since 3 July 1880 with breaks only during two world wars and 2006–2008. The AAA was effectively a global governing body in the early years of the sport, codifying its rules for the first time.


title: Track and field

text: Meanwhile, the United States began holding an annual national competition—the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships—first held in 1876 by the New York Athletic Club. The establishment of general sports governing bodies for the United States (the Amateur Athletic Union in 1888) and France (the Union des sociétés françaises de sports athlétiques in 1889) put the sport on a formal footing and meant that international competitions became possible.


title: Track and field

text: The establishment of the modern Olympic Games at the end of the 19th century marked a new high for track and field. The Olympic athletics programme, comprising track and field events plus a marathon race, contained many of the foremost sporting competitions of the 1896 Summer Olympics. The Olympics also consolidated the use of metric measurements in international track and field events, both for race distances and for measuring jumps and throws. The Olympic athletics programme greatly expanded over the next decades, and track and field contests remained among the Games' most prominent. The Olympics was the elite competition for track and field, and only amateur sportsmen could compete. Track and field continued to be a largely amateur sport, as this rule was strictly enforced: Jim Thorpe was stripped of his track and field medals from the 1912 Olympics after it was revealed that he had taken expense money for playing baseball, violating Olympic amateurism rules, before the 1912 Games. His medals were reinstated 29 years after his death.


title: Track and field

text: That same year, the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) was established, becoming the international governing body for track and field, and it enshrined amateurism as one of its founding principles for the sport. The National Collegiate Athletic Association held their first Men's Outdoor Track and Field Championship in 1921, making it one of the most prestigious competitions for students, and this was soon followed by the introduction of track and field at the inaugural World Student Games in 1923. The first continental track and field competition was the 1919 South American Championships, which was followed by the European Athletics Championships in 1934.


title: Track and field

text: Up until the early 1920s, track and field had been almost exclusively a male-only pursuit. Alice Milliat argued for the inclusion of women at the Olympics, but the International Olympic Committee refused. She founded the International Women's Sports Federation in 1921 and, alongside a growing women's sports movement in Europe and North America, the group initiated of the Women's Olympiad (held annually from 1921 to 1923). Working in conjunction with the English Women's Amateur Athletic Association (WAAA), the Women's World Games was held four times between 1922 and 1934, as well as a Women's International and British Games in London in 1924. These events ultimately led to the introduction of five track and field events for women in the athletics at the 1928 Summer Olympics. In China, women's track and field events were being held in the 1920s, but were subject to criticism and disrespect from audiences. National women's events were established in this period, with 1923 seeing the First British Track & Field championships for women and the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) sponsoring the First American Track & Field championships for women. Also in 1923, physical education advocate Zhang Ruizhen called for greater equality and participation of women in Chinese track and field. The rise of Kinue Hitomi and her 1928 Olympic medal for Japan signified the growth of women's track and field in East Asia. More women's events were gradually introduced as years progressed (although it was only towards the end of the century that the men's and women's programmes approached parity of events). Marking an increasingly inclusive approach to the sport, major track and field competitions for disabled athletes were first introduced at the 1960 Summer Paralympics.


title: Track and field

text: With the rise of numerous regional championships, as well as the growth in Olympic-style multi-sport events (such as the Commonwealth Games and the Pan-American Games), competitions between international track and field athletes became widespread. From the 1960s onwards, the sport gained more exposure and commercial appeal through television coverage and the increasing wealth of nations. After over half a century of amateurism, the amateur status of the sport began to be displaced by growing professionalism in the late 1970s. As a result, the Amateur Athletic Union was dissolved in the United States and it was replaced with a non-amateur body solely focused on the sport of athletics: The Athletics Congress (later USA Track and Field). The IAAF abandoned amateurism in 1982 and later removed all references to it from its name by rebranding itself as the International Association of Athletics Federations. While Western countries were limited to amateurs until the early 1980s, Soviet Bloc countries always fielded state-funded athletes who trained full-time, putting American and Western European athletes at a significant disadvantage. 1983 saw the establishment of the IAAF World Championships in Athletics—the first-ever global competition just for athletics—which, with the Olympics, became one of track and field's most prestigious competitions.


title: Track and field

text: The profile of the sport reached a new high in the 1980s, with a number of athletes becoming household names (such as Carl Lewis, Sergey Bubka, Sebastian Coe, Zola Budd and Florence Griffith Joyner). Many world records were broken in this period, and the added political element between competitors of the United States, East Germany, and the Soviet Union, in reaction to the Cold War, only served to stoke the sport's popularity. The increase in the commercial capacity of track and field was also met with developments in the application of sports science, and there were many changes to coaching methods, athlete's diet regimes, training facilities, and sports equipment. This was also accompanied by an increase in the use of performance-enhancing drugs. State-sponsored doping in 1970s and 1980s East Germany, China, the Soviet Union, and early 21st century Russia, as well as prominent individual cases such as those of Olympic gold medallists Ben Johnson and Marion Jones, damaged the public image and marketability of the sport.


title: Track and field

text: From the 1990s onwards, track and field became increasingly more professional and international, as the IAAF gained over two hundred member nations. The IAAF World Championships in Athletics became a fully professional competition with the introduction of prize money in 1997, and in 1998 the IAAF Golden League—an annual series of major track and field meetings in Europe—provided a higher level of economic incentive in the form of a US$1 million jackpot. In 2010, the series was replaced by the more lucrative Diamond League, a fourteen-meeting series held in Europe, Asia, North America, and the Middle East—the first-ever worldwide annual series of track and field meetings.


title: Track and field

text: Track and field events are divided into three broad categories: track events, field events, and combined events. The majority of athletes tend to specialize in just one event (or event type) with the aim of perfecting their performances, although the aim of combined events athletes is to become proficient in a number of disciplines. Track events involve running on a track over specified distances, and—in the case of the hurdling and steeplechase events—obstacles may be placed on the track. There are also relay races in which teams of athletes run and pass on a baton to their team members at the end of a certain distance.


title: Track and field

text: There are two types of field events: jumps and throws. In jumping competitions, athletes are judged on either the length or height of their jumps. The performances of jumping events for distance are measured from a board or marker, and any athlete overstepping this mark is judged to have fouled. In the jumps for height, an athlete must clear their body over a crossbar without knocking the bar off the supporting standards. The majority of jumping events are unaided, although athletes propel themselves vertically with purpose-built sticks in the pole vault.


title: Track and field

text: The throwing events involve hurling an implement (such as a heavyweight, javelin, or discus) from a set point, with athletes being judged on the distance that the object is thrown. Combined events involve the same group of athletes contesting a number of different track and field events. Points are given for their performance in each event and the athlete and/or team with the greatest points total at the end of all events is the winner.


title: Track and field

text: Races over short distances, or sprints, are among the oldest running competitions. The first 13 editions of the Ancient Olympic Games featured only one event, the stadion race, which was a race from one end of the stadium to the other. Sprinting events are focused on athletes reaching and sustaining their quickest possible running speed. Three sprinting events are currently held at the Olympics and outdoor World Championships: the 100 metres, 200 metres, and 400 metres. These events have their roots in races of imperial measurements that later changed to metric: the 100 m evolved from the 100-yard dash, the 200 m distances came from the furlong (or 1/8 of a mile), and the 400 m was the successor to the 440 yard dash or quarter-mile race.


title: Track and field

text: At the professional level, sprinters begin the race by assuming a crouching position in the starting blocks before leaning forward and gradually moving into an upright position as the race progresses and momentum is gained. Athletes remain in the same lane on the running track throughout all sprinting events, with the sole exception of the 400 m indoors. Races up to 100 m are largely focused upon acceleration to an athlete's maximum speed. All sprints beyond this distance increasingly incorporate an element of endurance. Human physiology dictates that a runner's near-top speed cannot be maintained for more than thirty seconds or so because lactic acid builds up once leg muscles begin to suffer oxygen deprivation. Top speed can only be maintained for up to 20 metres.


title: Track and field

text: The 60 metres is a common indoor event and indoor world championship event. Less-common events include the 50 metres, 55 metres, 300 metres, and 500 metres, which are run in some high school and collegiate competitions in the United States. The 150 metres, though rarely competed, has a star-studded history: Pietro Mennea set a world best in 1983, Olympic champions Michael Johnson and Donovan Bailey went head-to-head over the distance in 1997, and Usain Bolt improved Mennea's record in 2009.


title: Track and field

text: The most common middle-distance track events are the 800 metres, 1500 metres and mile run, although the 3000 metres may also be classified as a middle-distance event. The 880 yard run, or half mile, was the forebear of the 800 m distance and it has its roots in competitions in the United Kingdom in the 1830s. The 1500 m came about as a result of running three laps of a 500 m track, which was commonplace in continental Europe in the 20th century.


title: Track and field

text: Runners start the race from a standing position along a curved starting line and after hearing the starting pistol they head towards the innermost track to follow the quickest route to the finish. In 800 m races athletes begin at a staggered starting point before the turn in the track and they must remain in their lanes for the first 100 m of the race. This rule was introduced to reduce the amount of physical jostling between runners in the early stages of the race. Physiologically, these middle-distance events demand that athletes have good aerobic and anaerobic energy producing systems, and also that they have strong endurance.


title: Track and field

text: The 1500 m and mile run events have historically been some of the most prestigious track and field events. Swedish rivals Gunder Hägg and Arne Andersson broke each other's 1500 m and mile world records on a number of occasions in the 1940s. The prominence of the distances were maintained by Roger Bannister, who (in 1954) was the first to run the long-elusive four-minute mile, and Jim Ryun's exploits served to popularise interval training. Races between British rivals Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett and Steve Cram characterised middle-distance running in the 1980s. From the 1990s onwards, North Africans such as Noureddine Morceli of Algeria and Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco came to dominate the 1500 and mile events.


title: Track and field

text: Beyond the short distances of sprinting events, factors such as an athlete's reactions and top speed becomes less important, while qualities such as pace, race tactics and endurance become more so.


title: Track and field

text: There are three common long-distance running events in track and field competitions: 3000 metres, 5000 metres and 10,000 metres. The latter two races are both Olympic and World Championship events outdoors, while the 3000 m is held at the IAAF World Indoor Championships. The 5000 m and 10,000 m events have their historical roots in the 3-mile and 6-mile races. The 3000 m was historically used as a women's long-distance event, entering the World Championship programme in 1983 and Olympic programme in 1984, but this was abandoned in favour of a women's 5000 m event in 1995. Marathons, while long-distance races, are typically run on street courses, and often are run separately from other track and field events.


title: Track and field

text: In terms of competition rules and physical demands, long-distance track races have much in common with middle-distance races, except that pacing, stamina, and race tactics become much greater factors in performances. However, a number of athletes have achieved success in both middle- and long-distance events, including Saïd Aouita who set world records from 1500 m to 5000 m. The use of pace-setters in long-distance events is very common at the elite level, although they are not present at championship level competitions as all qualified competitors want to win.


title: Track and field

text: The long-distance track events gained popularity in the 1920s by the achievements of the "Flying Finns", such as multiple Olympic champion Paavo Nurmi. The successes of Emil Zátopek in the 1950s promoted intense interval training methods, but Ron Clarke's world record-breaking feats established the importance of natural training and even-paced running. The 1990s saw the rise of North and East African runners in long-distance events. Kenyan and Ethiopian athletes, in particular, have since remained dominant in these events.


title: Track and field

text: Relay races are the only track and field event in which a team of runners directly compete against other teams. Typically, a team is made up of four runners of the same sex. Each runner completes their specified distance (referred to as a leg) before handing over a baton to a teammate, who then begins their leg upon receiving the baton. There is usually a designated area where athletes must exchange the baton. Teams may be disqualified if they fail to complete the change within the area, or if the baton is dropped during the race. A team may also be disqualified if its runners are deemed to have wilfully impeded other competitors.


title: Track and field

text: Relay races emerged in the United States in the 1880s as a variation on charity races between firemen, who would hand a red pennant on to teammates every 300 yards. There are two very common relay events: the 4×100 metres relay and the 4×400 metres relay. Both events entered the Olympic programme at the 1912 Summer Games after a one-off men's medley relay featured in 1908 Olympics. The 4 × 100 m event is run strictly within the same lane on the track, meaning that the team collectively runs one complete circuit of the track. Teams in a 4 × 400 m event remain in their own lane until the runner of the second leg passes the first bend, at which point runners can leave their lanes and head towards the inner-most part of the circuit. For the second and third baton change overs, teammates must align themselves in respect of their team position – leading teams take the inner lanes while teammates of the slower teams must await the baton on outer lanes.


title: Track and field

text: The Shuttle Hurdle Relay per Hurdling web page: In a shuttle hurdle relay, each of four hurdlers on a team runs the opposite direction from the preceding runner. No batons are used for this particular relay.


title: Track and field

text: The IAAF keeps world records for five different types of track relays. As with 4×100 m and 4×400 m events, all races comprise teams of four athletes running the same distances, with the less commonly contested distances being the 4×200 m, 4×800 m and 4×1500 m relays. Other events include the distance medley relay (comprising legs of 1200 m, 400 m, 800 m, and 1600 m), which is frequently held in the United States, and a sprint relay, known as the Swedish medley relay, which is popular in Scandinavia and was held at the IAAF World Youth Championships in Athletics programme. Relay events have significant participation in the United States, where a number of large meetings (or relay carnivals) are focused almost exclusively on relay events.


title: Track and field

text: Races with hurdles as obstacles were first popularised in the 19th century in England. The first known event, held in 1830, was a variation of the 100-yard dash that included heavy wooden barriers as obstacles. A competition between the Oxford and Cambridge Athletic Clubs in 1864 refined this, holding a 120-yard race (110 m) with ten hurdles of 3-foot and 6 inches (1.06 m) in height (each placed 10 yards (9 m) apart), with the first and final hurdles 15 yards from the start and finish, respectively. French organisers adapted the race into metric (adding 28 cm) and the basics of this race, the men's 110 metres hurdles, has remained largely unchanged. The origin of the 400 metres hurdles also lies in Oxford, where (around 1860) a competition was held over 440 yards and twelve 1.06 m high wooden barriers were placed along the course. The modern regulations stem from the 1900 Summer Olympics: the distance was fixed to 400 m while ten 3-foot (91.44 cm) hurdles were placed 35 m apart on the track, with the first and final hurdles being 45 m and 40 m away from the start and finish, respectively. Women's hurdles are slightly lower at 84 cm (2 ft 9 in) for the 100 m event and 76 cm (2 ft 6 in) for the 400 m event.


title: Track and field

text: By far the most common events are the 100 metres hurdles for women, 110 m hurdles for men and 400 m hurdles for both sexes. The men's 110 m has been featured at every modern Summer Olympics while the men's 400 m was introduced in the second edition of the Games. Women's initially competed in the 80 metres hurdles event, which entered the Olympic programme in 1932. This was extended to the 100 m hurdles at the 1972 Olympics, but it was not until 1984 that a women's 400 m hurdles event took place at the Olympics (having been introduced at the 1983 World Championships in Athletics the previous year). Other distances and heights of hurdles, such as the 200 metres hurdles and low hurdles, were once common but are now held infrequently. The 300 metres hurdles is run in some levels of American competition.


title: Track and field

text: Outside of the hurdles events, the steeplechase race is the other track and field event with obstacles. Just as the hurdling events, the steeplechase finds its origin in student competition in Oxford, England. However, this event was born as a human variation on the original steeplechase competition found in horse racing. A steeplechase event was held on a track for the 1879 English championships and the 1900 Summer Olympics featured men's 2500 m and 4000 m steeplechase races. The event was held over various distances until the 1920 Summer Olympics marked the rise of the 3000 metres steeplechase as the standard event. The IAAF set the standards of the event in 1954, and the event is held on a 400 m circuit that includes a water jump on each lap. Despite the long history of men's steeplechase in track and field, the women's steeplechase only gained World Championship status in 2005, with its first Olympic appearance in 2008.


title: Track and field

text: The long jump is one of the oldest track and field events, having its roots as one of the events within the ancient Greek pentathlon contest. The athletes would take a short run up and jump into an area of dug up earth, with the winner being the one who jumped farthest. Small weights (Halteres) were held in each hand during the jump then swung back and dropped near the end to gain extra momentum and distance. The modern long jump, standardised in England and the United States around 1860, bears resemblance to the ancient event although no weights are used. Athletes sprint along a length of track that leads to a jumping board and a sandpit. The athletes must jump before a marked line and their achieved distance is measured from the nearest point of sand disturbed by the athlete's body.


title: Track and field

text: The athletics competition at the first Olympics featured a men's long jump competition and a women's competition was introduced at the 1948 Summer Olympics. Professional long jumpers typically have strong acceleration and sprinting abilities. However, athletes must also have a consistent stride to allow them to take off near the board while still maintaining their maximum speed. In addition to the traditional long jump, a standing long jump contest exists which requires that athletes leap from a static position without a run-up. A men's version of this event featured on the Olympic programme from 1900 to 1912.


title: Track and field

text: Similar to the long jump, the triple jump takes place on a track heading towards a sandpit. Originally, athletes would hop on the same leg twice before jumping into the pit, but this was changed to the current "hop, step and jump" pattern from 1900 onwards. There is some dispute over whether the triple jump was contested in ancient Greece: while some historians claim that a contest of three jumps occurred at Ancient Games, others such as Stephen G. Miller believe this is incorrect, suggesting that the belief stems from a mythologised account of Phayllus of Croton having jumped 55 ancient feet (around 16.3 m). The Book of Leinster, a 12th-century Irish manuscript, records the existence of "geal-ruith" (triple jump) contests at the Tailteann Games.


title: Track and field

text: The men's triple jump competition has been ever-present at the modern Olympics, but it was not until 1993 that a women's version gained World Championship status and went on to have its first Olympic appearance three years later. The men's standing triple jump event featured at the Olympics in 1900 and 1904, but such competitions have since become very uncommon, although it is still used as a non-competitive exercise drill. The Current world record for the Men's triple jump is 18.29 meter (60 ft 0in) held by Jonathan Edwards. The current women's world record is 15.67 meters (51 ft 4 3/4in) held by Yulimar Rojas.


title: Track and field

text: The first recorded instances of high jumping competitions were in Scotland in the 19th century. Further competitions were organised in 1840 in England and in 1865 the basic rules of the modern event were standardised there. Athletes have a short run up and then take off from one foot to jump over a horizontal bar and fall back onto a cushioned landing area. The men's high jump was included in the 1896 Olympics and a women's competition followed in 1928.


title: Track and field

text: Jumping technique has played a significant part in the history of the event. High jumpers typically cleared the bar feet first in the late 19th century, using either the Scissors, Eastern cut-off or Western roll technique. The straddle technique became prominent in the mid-20th century, but Dick Fosbury overturned tradition by pioneering a backwards and head-first technique in the late 1960s – the Fosbury Flop – which won him the gold at the 1968 Olympics. This technique has become the overwhelming standard for the sport from the 1980s onwards. The standing high jump was contested at the Olympics from 1900 to 1912, but is now relatively uncommon outside of its use as an exercise drill.


title: Track and field

text: In terms of sport, the use of poles for vaulting distances was recorded in Fierljeppen contests in the Frisian area of Europe, and vaulting for height was seen at gymnastics competitions in Germany in the 1770s. One of the earliest recorded pole vault competitions was in Cumbria, England in 1843. The basic rules and technique of the event originated in the United States. The rules required that athletes do not move their hands along the pole and athletes began clearing the bar with their feet first and twisting so that the stomach faces the bar. Bamboo poles were introduced in the 20th century and a metal box in the runway for planting the pole became standard. Landing mattresses were introduced in the mid-20th century to protect the athletes who were clearing increasingly greater heights.


title: Track and field

text: The modern event sees athletes run down a strip of track, plant the pole in the metal box, and vault over the horizontal bar before letting go of the pole and falling backwards onto the landing mattress. While earlier versions used wooden, metal or bamboo, modern poles are generally made from artificial materials such as fibreglass or carbon fibre. The pole vault has been an Olympic event since 1896 for men, but it was over 100 years later that the first women's world championship competition was held at the 1997 IAAF World Indoor Championships. The first women's Olympic pole vaulting competition occurred in 2000.


title: Track and field

text: Track and field contains some of the foremost kinds of throwing sports, and the four major disciplines are the only pure throwing events to feature at the Olympic Games.


title: Track and field

text: The genesis of the shot put can be traced to pre-historic competitions with rocks: in the Middle ages the stone put was known in Scotland and the steinstossen was recorded in Switzerland. In the 17th century, cannonball throwing competitions within the English military provided a precursor to the modern sport. The term "shot" originates from the use of round shot-style ammunition for the sport. The modern rules were first laid out in 1860 and required that competitors take legal throws within a square throwing area of seven feet (2.13 m) on each side. This was amended to a circle area with a seven-foot diameter in 1906, and the weight of the shot was standardised to 16 pounds (7.26 kg). Throwing technique was also refined over this period, with bent arm throws being banned as they were deemed too dangerous and the side-step and throw technique arising in the United States in 1876.


title: Track and field

text: The shot put has been an Olympic sport for men since 1896 and a women's competition using a 4 kg (8.82 lb) shot was added in 1948. Further throwing techniques have arisen since the post-war era: in the 1950s Parry O'Brien popularised the 180 degree turn and throw technique commonly known as the "glide", breaking the world record 17 times along the way, while Aleksandr Baryshnikov and Brian Oldfield introduced the "spin" or rotational technique in 1976.


title: Track and field

text: In the discus throw, athletes compete to throw a heavy disc the farthest. In standard competitions, athletes throw the disc from a set circular arc and take turns in a series of throw, with the singular best effort deciding the victor. As one of the events within the ancient pentathlon, the history of the discus throw dates back to 708 BC. In ancient times a heavy circular disc was thrown from a set standing position on a small pedestal, and it was this style that was revived for the 1896 Olympics. This continued until the 1906 Intercalated Games in Athens, which featured both the ancient style and the increasingly popular modern style of turning and throwing. By the 1912 Olympics, the ancient standing throw style had fallen into disuse and contests starting within a 2.5 m squared throwing area became the standard. The discus implement was standardised to 2 kg (4.4 pounds) in weight and 22 cm (8 inches) in diameter in 1907. The women's discus was among the first women's events on the Olympic programme, being introduced in 1928. The first modern athlete to throw the discus while rotating the whole body was Czech athlete František Janda-Suk, who invented the technique when studying the position of the famous statue of Discobolus and won the 1900 Olympic silver medal.


title: Track and field

text: As an implement of war and hunting, javelin throwing began in prehistoric times. Along with the discus, the javelin was the second throwing event in the ancient Olympic pentathlon. Records from 708 BC show two javelin competition types co-existing: throwing at a target and throwing the javelin for distance. It was the latter type from which the modern event derives. In ancient competitions, athletes would wrap an "ankyle" (thin leather strip) around the javelin that acted as a sling to facilitate extra distance. The javelin throw gained much popularity in Scandinavia in the late 19th century and athletes from the region are still among the most dominant throwers in men's competitions. The modern event features a short run up on a track and then the thrower releases the javelin before the foul line. The runway measures at a minimum of 30m in length, and is covered with the same surface as the track.


title: Track and field

text: The first Olympic men's javelin throw contest was held in 1908 and a women's competition was introduced in 1932. The first javelins were made of various types of wood, but in the 1950s, former athlete Bud Held introduced a hollow javelin, then a metal javelin, both of which increased throwers performances. Another former athlete, Miklós Németh invented the rough-tailed javelin and throws reached in excess of 100 m – edging towards the limits of stadia. The distances and the increasing number of horizontal landings led the IAAF to redesign the men's javelin to reduce distance and increase the implement's downward pitching moment to allow for easier measurement. Rough-tailed designs were banned in 1991 and all marks achieved with such javelins were removed from the record books. The women's javelin underwent a similar redesign in 1999. The current javelin specifications are 2.6 to 2.7 m in length and 800 grams in weight for men, and 2.2 to 2.3 m and 600 g for women.


title: Track and field

text: The earliest recorded precursors to the modern hammer throw stem from the Tailteann Games of ancient Ireland, which featured events such as throwing either a weight attached to a rope, a large rock on a wooden handle, or even a chariot wheel on a wooden axle. Other ancient competitions included throwing a cast iron ball attached to a wooden handle – the root of the term "hammer throw" due to their resemblance to the tools. In 16th century England, contests involving the throwing of actual blacksmith's Sledgehammers were recorded. The hammer implement was standardised in 1887 and the competitions began to resemble the modern event. The weight of the metal ball was set at 16 pounds (7.26 kg) while the attached wire had to measure between 1.175 m and 1.215 m.


title: Track and field

text: The men's hammer throw became an Olympic event in 1900 but the women's event – using a 4 kg (8.82 lb) weight – was not widely competed until much later, finally featuring on the women's Olympic programme in 2000. The distances thrown by male athletes became greater from the 1950s onwards as a result of improved equipment using the denser metals, a switch to concrete throwing areas, and more advanced training techniques. Professional hammer throwers were historically large, strong, sturdy athletes. However, qualities such as refined technique, speed and flexibility have become increasingly important in the modern era as the legal throwing area has been reduced from 90 to 34.92 degrees and throwing technique involves three to four controlled rotations.


title: Track and field

text: Combined (or multi-discipline) events are competitions in which athletes participate in a number of track and field events, earning points for their performance in each event, which adds to a total points score. Outdoors, the most common combined events are the men's decathlon (ten events) and the women's heptathlon (seven events). Due to stadium limitations, indoor combined events competition have a reduced number of events, resulting in the men's heptathlon and the women's pentathlon. Athletes are allocated points based on an international-standard points scoring system, such as the decathlon scoring table.


title: Track and field

text: The Ancient Olympic pentathlon (comprising long jump, javelin, discus, the "stadion" race and wrestling) was a precursor to the track and field combined events and this ancient event was restored at the 1906 Summer Olympics (Intercalated Games). A men's all-around was held at the 1904 Summer Olympics, contested between five American and two British athletes.


title: Track and field

text: The term "track and field" is intertwined with the stadiums that first hosted such competitions. The two basic features of a track and field stadium are the outer oval-shaped running track and an area of turf within this track—the field. In earlier competitions, track lengths varied: the Panathinaiko Stadium measured 333.33 metres at the 1896 Summer Olympics, while at the 1904 Olympics the distance was a third of a mile (536.45 m) at Francis Field. As the sport developed, the IAAF standardised the length to 400 m and stated that the tracks must be split into six to eight running lanes. Precise widths for the lanes were established, as were regulations regarding the curvature of the track. Tracks made of flattened cinders were popular in the early 20th century but synthetic tracks became standard in the late 1960s. 3M's Tartan track (an all-weather running track of polyurethane) gained popularity after its use at the 1968 US Olympic Trials and the 1968 Summer Olympics and it began the process in which synthetic tracks became the standard for the sport. Many track and field stadiums are multi-purpose stadiums, with the running track surrounding a field built for other sports, such as the various types of football.


title: Track and field

text: The field of the stadium combines a number of elements for use in the jumping and throwing events. The long jump and triple jump areas comprise a straight, narrow 40-metre running track with a sandpit at one or both ends. Jumps are measured from a take off board—typically a small strip of wood with a plasticine marker attached—which ensures athletes jump from behind the measurement line. The pole vault area is also a 40-metre running track and has an indentation in the ground (the box) where vaulters plant their poles to propel themselves over a crossbar before falling onto cushioned landing mats. The high jump is a stripped-down version of this, with an open area of track or field that leads to a crossbar with a square area of landing mats behind it.


title: Track and field

text: The four throwing events generally all begin on one side of the stadium. The javelin throw typically takes place on a piece of track that is central and parallel to the straights of the main running track. The javelin throwing area is a sector shape frequently across the Pitch (sports field) in the middle of the stadium, ensuring that the javelin has a minimal chance of causing damage or injury. The discus throw and hammer throw contests begin in a tall metal cage usually situated in one of the corners of the field. The cage reduces the danger of implements being thrown out of the field of play and throws travel diagonally across the field in the centre of the stadium. The shot put features a circular throwing area with a toe board at one end. The throwing area is a sector. Some stadia also have a water jump area on one side of the field specifically for steeplechase races.


title: Track and field

text: Basic indoor venues may be adapted gymnasiums, which can easily accommodate high jump competitions and short track events. Full-size indoor arenas (i.e. those fully equipped to host all events for the World Indoor Championships) bear similarities with their outdoor equivalents. Typically, a central area is surrounded by a 200-metre oval track with four to eight lanes. The track can be banked at the turns to allow athletes to run around the radius more comfortably. Some have a second running track going straight across the field area, parallel to the straights of the main circuit. This track is used for the 60 metres and 60 metres hurdles events, which are held almost exclusively indoors.


title: Track and field

text: Another common adaptation in the United States is a 160-yard track (11 laps to a mile) that fits into a common basketball court-sized arena. This was quite popular when races were held at imperial distances, which gradually was phased out by different organizations in the 1970s and 1980s. Examples of this configuration include the Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden, and the Sunkist Invitational formerly held in the Los Angeles Sports Arena.


title: Track and field

text: All four of the common jumping events are held at indoor venues. The long and triple jump areas run alongside the central 60 m track and are mostly identical in form to their outdoor counterparts. The pole vault track and landing area are also alongside the central running track. Shot put and weight throw are the only throwing events held indoors due to size restrictions. The throwing area is similar to the outdoor event, but the landing sector is a rectangular section surrounded by netting or a stop barrier.


title: Track and field

text: In addition to hosting the World Indoor Championships, the IAAF has hosted the IAAF World Indoor Tour since 2016.


title: Track and field

text: The rules of track events in athletics as observed in most international athletics competitions are set by the Competition Rules of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). The most recent complete set of rules is the 2009 rules that relate only to competitions in 2009. Key rules of track events are those regarding starting, running and finishing. Current World Athletics (WA) Rules are available on WA's website . Current USATF (USA) Competition Rules booklet is available on the USATF website . Prior USATF Competition Rules booklets are also available (2002, 2006 to 2020) .


title: Track and field

text: The start of a race is marked by a white line 5 cm wide. In all races that are not run in lanes the start line must be curved, so that all the athletes start the same distance from the finish.


title: Track and field

text: Starting blocks may be used for all races up to and including 400 m (including the first leg of the 4 × 100 m and 4 × 400 m) and may not be used for any other race. No part of the starting block may overlap the start line or extend into another lane.


title: Track and field

text: All races must be started by the report of the starter's gun or approved starting apparatus fired upwards after they have ascertained that athletes are steady and in the correct starting position. An athlete may not touch either the start line or the ground in front of it with their hands or feet when on their marks.


title: Track and field

text: For sprint races up to 400 m, the starter gives two commands: "on your marks" to instruct athletes to approach the start line, followed by "set" to advise the athletes that the start of the race is imminent. The commands of the starter are typically given in the native language in national competitions, or in English or French in international competitions. Once all athletes are set in their starting position, the gun or an approved starting apparatus must be fired or activated. If the starter is not satisfied that all are ready to proceed, the athletes may be called out of the blocks and the process started over.


title: Track and field

text: There are different types of starts for races of different distances. Middle- and long-distance races mainly use the waterfall start. This is when all athletes begin on a curved line that moves farther out at the outer edge of the track. Competitors are allowed to move towards the inside lane right away, as long as it is safe to do so. For some middle-distance races, such as 800 m, each athlete starts in their own lane. Once the gun fires, they must run in the lane they began in until markers on the track notify them it is time to move towards the inside lane. For sprint races, athletes begin in start blocks and must stay in their own lane for the entire race.


title: Track and field

text: An athlete, after assuming a final set position, may not commence his starting motion until after receiving the report of the gun, or approved starting apparatus. If, in the judgment of the starter or recallers, he does so any earlier, it is considered a false start. It is deemed a false start if, in the judgment of the starter an athlete fails to comply with the commands "on your marks" or "set" as appropriate after a reasonable time; or an athlete after the command "on your marks" disturbs other athletes in the race through sound or otherwise. If the runner is in the "set" position and moves, then the runner is also disqualified. , any athlete making a false start is disqualified.


title: Track and field

text: In International elite competition, electronically tethered starting blocks sense the reaction time of the athletes. If the athlete reacts in less than 0.1 second, an alert sounds for a recall starter and the offending athlete is guilty of a false start. Since 2009, the offending athletes are immediately disqualified.


title: Track and field

text: For sprinting events (bar the 4 × 400 m relay and the indoor 400 metres), each athlete must run the race within their allocated lane from start to finish. If an athlete leaves their lane or steps on the line demarking each lane the athlete will be disqualified. Lane rules also apply for initial periods of other track races, for example, the beginning of the 800 m. Similar rules apply for longer distance races when a large field of athletes is present and separate starting points are designated, with the field merging into one group shortly after the starting phase.


title: Track and field

text: Any athlete who jostles or obstructs another athlete, in a way that impedes his progress, should be disqualified from that event. However, if an athlete is pushed or forced by another person to run outside his lane, and if no material advantage is gained, the athlete should not be disqualified.


title: Track and field

text: The finish of a race is marked by a white line 5 cm wide. The finishing position of athletes is determined by the order in which any part of their torso (as distinguished from the head, neck, arms, legs, hands or feet) reaches the vertical plane of the nearer edge of the finish line. Fully automatic timing systems (photo timing) are becoming more and more common at increasingly lower levels of track meets, improving the accuracy, while eliminating the need for eagle-eyed officials on the finish line. Fully automatic timing (FAT) is required for high level meets and any time a sprint record is set (though distance records can be accepted if timed by three independent stopwatches).


title: Track and field

text: With the accuracy of the timing systems, ties are rare. Ties between different athletes are resolved as follows: In determining whether there has been a tie in any round for a qualifying position for the next round based on time, a judge (called the chief photo finish judge) must consider the actual time recorded by the athletes to one thousandth of a second. If the judge decides that there has been a tie, the tying athletes must be placed in the next round or, if that is not practicable, lots must be drawn to determine who must be placed in the next round. In the case of a tie for first place in any final, the referee decides whether it is practicable to arrange for the athletes so tying to compete again. If he decides it is not, the result stands. Ties in other placings remain.


title: Track and field

text: In general, most field events allow a competitor to take their attempt individually, under theoretically the same conditions as the other competitors in the competition. Each attempt is measured to determine who achieved the greatest distance.


title: Track and field

text: Vertical jumps (high jump and pole vault) set a bar at a particular height. The competitor must clear the bar without knocking it off the standards that are holding the bar (flat). Three failures in a row ends the competitor's participation in the event. The competitor has the option to PASS their attempt, which can be used to strategic advantage (of course that advantage is lost if the competitor misses). A pass could be used to save energy and avoid taking a jump that would not improve their position in the standings. After all competitors have either cleared, passed or failed their attempts at a height, the bar goes up. The amount the bar goes up is predetermined before the competition, though when one competitor remains, that competitor may choose their own heights for the remaining attempts. A record is kept of each attempt by each competitor. After all competitors have taken their attempts, the one jumping the highest is the winner, and so on down the other competitors in the event. Ties are broken by first, the number of attempts taken at the highest height (fewest wins), and then if still tied, by the total number of misses in the competition as a whole. The bar does not go back to a lower height except to break a tie for first place or a qualifying position. If those critical positions are still tied after applying the tiebreakers, all tied competitors take a fourth jump at the last height. If they still miss, the bar goes down one increment where they again jump. This process continues until the tie is broken.


title: Track and field

text: Horizontal jumps (long jump and triple jump) and all throws must be initiated behind a line. In the case of horizontal jumps, that line is a straight line perpendicular to the runway. In the case of throws, that line is an arc or a circle. Crossing the line while initiating the attempt invalidates the attempt—it becomes a foul. All landings must occur in a sector. For the jumps, that is a sand filled pit, for throws it is a defined sector. A throw landing on the line on the edge of sector is a foul (the inside edge of the line is the outside edge of the sector). Assuming a proper attempt, officials measure the distance from the closest landing point back to the line. The measuring tape is carefully straightened to the shortest distance between the point and the line. To accomplish this, the tape must be perfectly perpendicular to the take off line in jumps, or is pulled through the center point of the arc for throws. The officials at the landing end of the tape have the zero, while the officials at the point of initiation measure and record the length. Whenever a record (or potential record) occurs, that measurement is taken (again) with a steel tape, and observed by at least three officials (plus usually the meet referee). Steel tapes are easily bent and damaged, so are not used to measure everyday competitions. For major competitions, each competitor gets three tries. The top competitors (usually 8 or 9 depending on that competition's rules or the number of lanes on the track) gets three more tries. At that level of competition, the order of competitors for those final three attempts are set—so the competitor in first place at the end of the third round is last, while the last competitor to qualify goes first. Some meets rearrange the competition order again for the final round, so the final attempt is taken by the leader at that point. At other competitions, meet management may choose to limit all competitors to four or three attempts. Whatever the format, all competitors get an equal number of attempts.


title: Track and field

text: Men and women have different weights for their throwing implements – men's javelin is 800 grams compared to 600 for women, men's weight throw is 35 pounds compared to 20 for women, men's discus is 2 kilograms to women's 1, men's shot put is 16 pounds compared to 8 pounds for women, and men's hammer throw is also 16 pounds to the women's 8. Additionally, men's high hurdles are at height of 42 inches compared to women's hurdles which are 33 inches. For the intermediate hurdles (400 meter hurdles), the men's hurdle height is 36 inches compared to 30 inches for women.


title: Track and field

text: The international governance of track and field falls under the jurisdiction of athletics organisations. World Athletics is the global governing body for track and field, and athletics as a whole. The governance of track and field at continental and national level is also done by athletics bodies. Some national federations are named after the sport, including USA Track & Field and the Philippine Amateur Track & Field Association, but these organisations govern more than just track and field and are in fact athletics governing bodies. These national federations regulate sub-national and local track and field clubs, as well as other types of running clubs.


title: Track and field

text: The major global track and field competitions are both held under the scope of athletics. Track and field contests make up the majority of events on the Olympic and Paralympic athletics programmes, which occur every four years. Track and field events have held a prominent position at the Summer Olympics since its inception in 1896, and the events are typically held in the main stadium of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Events such as the 100 metres receive some of the highest levels of media coverage of any Olympic or Paralympic sporting event.