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- The UK Athletics Championships was an annual national championship in track and field for the United Kingdom, organised by the British Athletics Federation. The event incorporated the 1980 Olympic trials for the British Olympic team. The venue for the event was rotational and designed to be inclusive – all four Home Nations hosted the event during its twenty-year existence, as well as several areas of England. Created in 1977 and open only to British athletes, the event was initiated to provide an alternative to the AAA Championships, which was open to foreign athletes and was organised by an English amateur organisation. The event failed to displace the long-established AAA event and did not attract the nation's best athletes. The event was not part of a formal international selection process and the competition's early scheduling in the calendar was not conducive to participation; the event often took place in May, which was well before the peak of the track and field season in August and early September. The annual format ceased after 1993. The British Athletics Federation organised a "British Championships" event in 1997, which proved to be the most important domestic competition that season. The bankruptcy of the British Athletics Federation that same year effectively rendered the competition defunct. Both the UK Championships, and the AAA Championships would later be superseded by the British Athletics Championships, organised by UK Athletics – the government-led successor organisation to the British Athletics Federation. (en)
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