摘要：Understanding the mechanism of sports injuries and knowledge about the influence and interaction of internal and external risk factors are the grounds for preventive activities to reduce the number and severity of sports injuries. Therefore, the main goal of this paper was to establish the type and frequency of injuries in athletics and to identify the causes and the time of their occurrence with regard to the athletics discipline. The study was conducted on a sample of 84 active athletes (45 male and 39 female) from 14 Croatian clubs (average age of 23.44 years with an average of 10.58 years of active practice in athletics) filling out an anonymous questionnaire containing 16 general and 9 specific particles. The research results indicate that the muscle rupture (17%) is the most common injury, followed by overuse syndrome (14%) and muscle strain (13%), while the hamstring (20%) and foot (19%) are the most frequently affected anatomical parts. Hamstring rupture and strain are predominant in the sprint events, while in the jumping disciplines, the most common are ankle sprain, overuse syndrome and muscle rupture and strain. Dominant injuries in the throwing events are overuse syndrome, nerve injury and muscle rupture and strain. The most common causes of injuries are the low level of technique performance, poor training conditions, own carelessness of the athletes and high level of tiredness. Most of injuries occurred during the summer competition period and preparatory period for summer competition period. Result of this study should improve the prevention system for Croatian track and field athletes.
