Made up of a group of walking, running, jumping and/or throwing events, athletics aims for the production of measured and maximal performances according to a space or time scale which takes place in a competitive and controlled context. But what does remain of those characteristics when they encounter school ? In which and how do they change under the effect of institutional, educational and didactic pressures ? On the basis of those questionings, the point of this research is to establish the underlying process and the stakes related to the installation and the spread of athletics at school. Between 1941 and 1967 the operators of the school, federal, political and cultural world agree to make the activity comply with the educational orthodoxy. In this sense, athletics is nothing but a specific educational back-up and it reveals more the culture of the institution to which it belongs than the one of the civil associative environment. Athletics has got a double goal : first the youth's sports enculturation and second the conforming of sport at school. The first one answers a mainly competitive and selective example, claimed by the federal players whereas the second one secures the institutional acknowledgement and integration of the physical education that teachers are fond of. Consequently, we suggest that high school takes up sport through a privileged support based on athletics and strives for the spread of a different and paradoxical image of the sports practice, belonging to five important issues which are ideological, institutional, disciplinary, docimological and cultural.
