Credit this game not only with popularizing the idea of multi-sport video games, but also with actually giving arcade visitors some real exercise! With the speed of their in-game running directly proportional to how fast players can pound the run buttons, Track and Field may very well be the first arcade game that made players work up a sweat. (It wouldn't be the last, of course; see Dance Dance Revolution, among many others.)
Of course this kind of novelty needs a good game attached to it to really work, and Track and Field is indeed a good game. Graphics and sound are typical of the early 1980s arcade, rather cartoony in other words, but the game also makes good use of digitized voice samples, announcing players' time or distance after each leg of every event. Combining those different events into a single game was also an excellent idea, one that would be duplicated by many games to come. Not only does it give players more to do in every game, it also gives they get a much-needed break from pounding buttons over and over, since some events rely more on timing than brute strength.
Sports games of course have vastly improved since Track and Field's release, and controllers like Nintendo's Wiimote and Microsoft's Kinect offer even more realistic interaction than repeated button pressing. Still, Track and Field remains an excellent game, and certainly worth considering by anyone looking for a video-game work-out!