Athletics is the sport in which records are most closely tied to measurement. Time is measured to the hundredth of a second, distance to the centimetre, and the rules around wind, timing equipment and courses are strict. That precision is why the progression of a track record can be traced event by event for well over a century.
The rankings in this section cover the sprints, the marathon, the jumps and the longest-standing marks on the record list. Several of them include context that goes beyond the numbers: electronic timing replaced hand timing, tailwinds above the legal limit disqualify a mark from the record list, and the shoes worn on the road have changed substantially since 2017.
Read these rankings alongside our guides on the sprint record book, super shoes in the marathon, and why some athletics records have lasted for decades.
The fastest wind-legal 100-meter times ever run by men, led by Usain Bolt's 9.58-second world record from the 2009 World Championships.
The fastest wind-legal 100-meter times ever run by women, topped by Florence Griffith-Joyner's 10.49-second mark from 1988.
The greatest heights ever cleared in the men's high jump, led by Javier Sotomayor's 2.45m mark that has stood since 1993.
The farthest jumps in men's long jump history, including Bob Beamon's legendary 1968 'leap of the century' and Mike Powell's still-standing world record.
The current world records in track and field that have gone unbroken the longest, several dating back to the 1980s.
How the official men's marathon world record has fallen over the past two decades, almost entirely on the fast, pancake-flat Berlin course.
How the women's marathon world record (mixed-gender race category) has progressed, including Paula Radcliffe's mark that stood for sixteen years.
Why a 100 m time needs a wind reading, how hand timing gave way to electronic timing, and what reaction-time rules do to the numbers.
A look at carbon-plated shoes, the sub-two-hour attempts and the rule changes that followed, and what it means to compare marathon times across eras.
Altitude, rule changes, doping-era marks and plain statistical outliers: the reasons a handful of records have gone untouched for a generation or more.