It looks a little different. Feels a little different too. For centuries, purple has been associated with royalty. Now, for the first time in Olympic history, it will be the colour of the track. And in Paris they believe a new speed king has arrived in town.
One of the few athletes to step on the track so far is Alain Blondel, the head of athletics at Paris 2024 and a former European decathlon champion. “It’s even nicer than we expected,” he tells the Guardian. “The general feedback is: ‘Wow.’ That it looks great. That it is spectacular.”
How fast is it? No one knows for sure just yet, as Blondel says that they want to keep it in the best possible condition for the athletes. However his excitement is palpable.
“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.”
The track is made by Mondo, the Italian manufacturer that has been responsible for every Olympic track since 1976. In Tokyo it insisted its design gave a 1-2% edge compared with previous versions – although the new super-spike technology and hot weather were also big factors in the numerous Olympic and world records that fell.
But Alessandro Piceli, a research and development manager at Mondo, believes that the latest version – which the Guardian understands was debuted at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest last year – is even better than the one used in Japan.
“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.”
All this high performance, however, does not come cheap. The track is estimated to have cost between €2m and €3m. But there is no doubting Mondo’s CV. At the world indoor championships in Glasgow in March, the company celebrated its 300th world record when the Bahamas’ Devynne Charlton ran 7.65sec in the women’s 60m hurdles final. The first, incidentally, was set back in 1972. Giorgio Lesage, Mondo’s innovation and sustainability director, says it will be good for Paralympians too. “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 says he hopes the Stade de France will be rocking like London 2012’s Super Saturday once the Games get under way. Indeed, the programme has been deliberately structured so that the decathlon world record-holder, Kevin Mayer, and the European championships bronze medallist Makenson Gletty compete on the opening two 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.”
Blondel also says fans should watch out for the special long jump platform too. “Carl Lewis visited us and he was impressed with the colour and the setup of the long jump,” says Blondel. “We have like a platform – like for a concert – for the athlete that will jump which is right in the middle of the back straight and it looks good.
“The programme on each night is tremendous. Everything is set for it to be dramatic from the first session to the last.”
