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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

The article talks about 'track and field', which isn't a term I've ever heard before. It's the athletics team that's been banned isn't it? The article even sounds confused that 'track and field' is administered by an organisation called 'International Association of Athletics Federations', which could have been a clue that the name was wrong.

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Track and Field is the common umbrella term for basically the sports that happen in the Olympic stadium: running, throwing, jumping, etc. i.e. the events that involve running on a "track" and doing activities in a "field".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_and_field

This is true, but the narrow, international definition of "athletics" (which Wikipedia calls "Sport of athletics") apparently includes road running, cross country running, and race walking. These are often not considered to fall under the term "track and field".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_of_athletics

In the US "Athletics" is generally understood to be any sport that is athletic. The "Athletics Department" at a school oversees Swimming, Squash, Football, Basketball, etc. Track & Field is a specific sport for which a school would compete: while individuals win their Track or Field competitions, the school gets points for each individual competition. This may not be how the terms are viewed outside the US, though. But high schools will have "Track & Field season", usually in the spring, which is when they have their meets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_and_field

According to wikipedia athletics covers a few more sports:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_of_athletics

However, the dictionary definition of athletics is "physical sports and games of any kind". That definition makes more sense, because football teams have the word athletic in their name (e.g. "Charlton Athletic"), and the word "athlete" is typically used for any type of sports-person.

In the United States at least, "track and field" refers to what other countries might call "athletics" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_and_field). The term "athletics" in the US would more often be used to refer to sports in general.

Track and field is the American English term for what you're calling "athletics".

In the US, "athletics" is usually called "track and field". Here we have "USA Track & Field" as our governing body.

At least here in Canada the term "track and field" is used to refer in general to running, jumping and throwing athletic sports.

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