Are an important part of

Track and field
USA Track & Field is the governing body for track and field in the United States. It organizes the annual USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships and USA Indoor Track and Field Championships. The Diamond League currently features one round in the United States, the Prefontaine Classic; the series formerly included the Adidas Grand Prix as well. Three of the World Marathon Majors are held in the United States: the Boston Marathon, Chicago Marathon and New York City Marathon. The Freihofer's Run for Women is also an IAAF Road Race Label Event. Amateur organizations such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association and Amateur Athletic Union sanction cross-country running in fall, indoor track and field in winter, and outdoor track and field in spring.
Jesse Owens was a notable US track athlete who achieved international fame at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, by winning four gold medals: 100 meters, long jump, 200 meters, and 4 × 100-meter relay. He was the most successful athlete at the Games and, as a black man, was credited with "single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy", although he "wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either’’.
Americans have frequently set world standards in various disciplines of track and field for both male and female athletic Tyson Gay and Michael Johnson hold various sprint records for male athletes, while Florence Griffith Joyner set various world sprint records for female athletes. Mary Slaney set many world records for middle-distance disciplines.
A turning point occurred in US track in the running boom of the 1970s^] After a series of American successes in various distances from marathoners Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers as well as middle-distance runners Dave Wottle and Steve Prefontaine, running as an American pastime began to take shape. The U.S. win in the 1976 Olympic men's decathlon, achieved by then-Bruce Jenner, made Jenner a national celebrity. High school track in the United States became a unique foundation for creating the United States middle-distance running talent pool, and from 1972 to 1981 an average of 13 high school boys in the United States would run under 4:10 in the mile per year.^] During this time, several national high school records in the United States were set and remained largely unbroken until the 2000s. The number of high school boys running the mile under 4:10 per year dropped abruptly from 1982,and female participation in many distance events was forbidden by athletic authorities until the 1980s However a renaissance in high school track developed when Jack Daniels, a former Olympian, published a training manual called "Daniels' Running Formula", which became the most widely used distance training protocol among American coaches along with Arthur Lydiard's high-mileage regimen. Carl Lewis is credited with "normalizing" the practice of having a lengthy track career as opposed to retiring once reaching the age when it is less realistic of gaining a personal best result. The United States is home to school-sponsored track and field, a tradition in which most schools from middle school through college feature a track and field team. Owing to the number of American athletes who satisfy Olympic norm standards, the US holds national trials to select the best of its top-tier athletes for Olympic competition.