USA Track & Field

USA Track & Field (USATF) is the United States national governing body for the sports of track and field, cross country running, road running and racewalking (known as the sport of athletics outside the US). The USATF was known for a number of years as The Athletics Congress (TAC) after its spin off from the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), which governed the sport in the US through most of the 20th century until the Amateur Sports Act of 1978 dissolved its responsibility.

Based in Indianapolis, USATF is a non-profit organization with a membership of nearly 100,000. The organization is led by an elected President Stephanie Hightower and a full-time Executive Director/CEO. On April 23, 2012, USATF announced the CEO position, that had been vacant since July 2010 with the termination of the contract with Doug Logan, would be filled by former NASCAR executive Max Siegel.

USA Track & Field is involved in many aspects of the sport at the local, national, and international level – providing the rules, officials, coaching education, sports science and athlete development, youth programs, masters (age 40+) competition, the National Track & Field Hall of Fame, and an annual meeting. It also organizes the annual USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. Through its sanctioning program, the national body provides the insurance coverage necessary for members to rent facilities, thus allowing for competitive opportunities for all athletes to happen.

Track and field

Track and field is a sport which combines various athletic contests based on the skills of running, jumping, and throwing. The name is derived from the sport's typical venue: a stadium with an oval running track enclosing a grass field where the throwing and jumping events take place. It 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.

The running events, which include sprints, middle and long-distance events, and hurdling, are won by the athlete with the fastest time. The jumping and throwing events are won by the athlete who achieves 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", such as heptathlon and decathlon, in which athletes compete in a number of the above events. Most track and field events are individual sports with a single victor, but a number are relay races. Events are almost exclusively divided by gender, although both the men's and women's competitions are usually held at the same venue.

Track & Field (video game)

Track & Field, known in Japan as Hyper Olympic (ハイパーオリンピック, Haipā Orinpikku), is a 1983 Olympic-themed sports arcade game developed and published by Konami. The Japanese release sported an official license for the 1984 Summer Olympics.

The arcade version was released in 1983. The simple gameplay, based on quick repeating button presses, set the basics for sequels and similar games in the genre for the next decades. There were several home versions of the original; the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC versions were only released as part of the Game, Set and Match II compilation in 1988, and are poorly regarded by fans. The NES version was especially well-received, and sold well.

Gameplay

In the original arcade game, the player uses two "run" buttons (or a trackball in later units that replaced the buttons that were continually broken- some buttons were originally replaced with buttons that had guards on them so players could not slam them with their fists) and one "action" button to control an athlete competing in following six events:

Track & Field II

Track & Field II (known in Japan as Konamik Sports in Seoul) is a sequel to Track & Field created by Konami for the NES in 1988. It still continues the Olympic-themed sports events, but adds more realism by choosing a country for the player to represent. The series boasted 15 sporting events, with two of them available as bonus stages between rounds of the "Olympic" mode. As the Japanese title indicates, the game is based on the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, hence the introduction of Taekwondo (a Korean martial art) as one of the events.

A common problem players had with the game was that many of the events required a power meter to be built up by radiply pressing the A button, then releasing it with the B button. Many players could not press the A button fast enough to build up enough power, though it could be done with a turbo controller, or using a method similar to stringing a guitar, by holding the controller against the players chest or a flat surface and using the thumb and index finger together running them rapidly across the A button.