Both the 100 meter and 110 meter hurdles are sprints with evenly spaced obstacles. The first competitions took place in Great Britain in the early 19th Century, and the 120 yard hurdles was an official event in the Cambridge-Oxford track and field meet in 1864.

At the end of the century, the French added a few centimeters to the race, converting it to a metric distance and the 110 meter women's hurdles race introduced in the Munich Olympics in 1972, was 100 meter instead of 110 meters to allow for the fact that women's strides are about 1 meter shorted than men's.

Female athletes quickly developed strength and speed, however, so the distances between the hurdles were adjusted and the height of the hurdles was raised.