The Stade de France is set to unveil the first-ever purple Olympic track, which is claimed to be the fastest track ever, built for taking down records.
Alain Blondel, head of athletics for Paris 2024 and a former European decathlon champion, is among the few who have tested the track. “It’s even nicer than we expected,” he told the Guardian. “The general feedback is: ‘Wow.’ That it looks great. That it is spectacular.”
How much faster this purple track is is yet to be known, but Blondel’s enthusiasm for its speed potential is clear. “It feels like a jewel that we should not touch that much,” he says, smiling. “But my first feeling I had from walking it was that I would love to wear spikes again and run on it. The feeling when you come on the track is that it’s light, it’s bright, and there’s a wish to run fast.”
This high-tech track is manufactured by Mondo, the Italian company behind every Olympic track since 1976. Mondo claimed a 1-2% performance boost in Tokyo, attributing it partly to the track design, super-spike technology, and favorable weather. According to Alessandro Piceli, R&D manager at Mondo, the latest track—debuted at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest—is even more advanced.
“We are focusing on the dynamic connection between the track and a new generation of shoes,” he says. “For the track, we only see the aesthetics, but there is great work that goes into the underlayer. A new granule of polymeric material, made especially for it, was inserted in the Tokyo track. We have made it even better now. We have chemists, engineers, and physicists who take care of the performance of the material.”
The investment in this high-performance track is substantial, estimated between €2m and €3m.
Mondo’s reputation is solid, celebrating its 300th world record at the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow. Giorgio Lesage, Mondo’s innovation and sustainability director, also highlighted the track’s benefits for Paralympians. “Since it’s made of rubber, there is a good interaction between the track and wheelchairs that guarantees good grip and resistance,” he says. “Paralympic athletes are very satisfied. Prosthetics are more aggressive on the track, but the quality of our product allows its use without any issue.”
Blondel hopes the flashy new track will have the Stade de France buzzing with energy like London’s Super Saturday in 2012. The event schedule is built around top French athletes, like decathlon world record-holder Kevin Mayer and European bronze medalist Makenson Gletty, competing in the opening days.
“I’m dreaming that we will have a gold Saturday like the one in London,” admits Blondel. “We may not win three in a row, as the Brits did. But the aim is to have the crowd enjoying the French athletes from the opening morning, with Kevin and Makenson starting strong, and it will be like a wheel rolling until the end of the competition. We want to have the Stade de France shaking like at London 2012.”
“The programme on each night is tremendous. Everything is set for it to be dramatic from the first session to the last.”
