The athletics competitions at the 2012 Olympic Games in London were held during the last 10 days of the Games, on 3–12 August. Track and field events took place at the Olympic Stadium in east London. The road events, however, started and finished on The Mall in central London.
Over 2,000 athletes from 201 nations competed in 47 events in total, with both men and women having a very similar schedule of events. Men competed in 24 events and women in 23, of which 21 were the same for both. The women's schedule lacked the 50 km race walk and included 100 m hurdles and heptathlon as opposed to the men's 110 m hurdles and decathlon. The youngest participant in the athletics competition was Andorran 15-year-old Cristina Llovera while the oldest was 46-year-old Ukrainian Oleksandr Dryhol. South African Oscar Pistorius became the first amputee sprinter to compete at the Olympics.
Competition schedule
The venue for the track and field events was the Olympic Stadium while the walks and the marathons started and finished on The Mall. In the tables below, M stands for morning and A for afternoon.
Medal summary
(WR = World Record, OR = Olympic Record)
Medal table
Note: Three competitors tied for silver in the men's high jump event.
Men
*Indicates the athlete only competed in the preliminary heats. Tyson Gay was stripped of his silver medal due to a doping violation. The United States team was disqualified. On 24 March 2016, the Court of Arbitration for Sport has issued decision that all competitive results obtained by Sergey Kirdyapkin of Russia from 20 August 2009 to 15 October 2012 are disqualified for doping use. Redistribution of the medals in this event occurred on 17 June 2016, with Tallent awarded the gold medal by the IOC at a ceremony in Melbourne, Australia, with Si claiming silver and Heffernan bronze. Gold medalist Ivan Ukhov of Russia was disqualified for doping in 2019. Medals were reallocated in 2021. Original silver medalist Oleksandr Pyatnytsya of Ukraine was stripped of his silver medal and result following a positive finding in a retest of his 2012 anti-doping sample. On 24 February 2017 Antti Ruuskanen received the silver medal in Finland. On 28 June 2017 Vítězslav Veselý received the bronze medal in Czech Republic.