athletics vs sports

athletics

noun
  • A group of sporting activities including track and field, road running, cross country and racewalking. 

  • Physical activities such as sports and games requiring stamina, fitness and skill. 

sports

verb
  • To participate in sports; typically used by a person with little interest in the subject to derisively elide details of the activity in question. 

How often have the words athletics and sports occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )