The purple athletics track has been one of the symbols of Paris 2024

Paris is turning purple for the last week of the Olympics. In the first weeks, it was the Stade de France, the venue for the athletics events, that turned purple. Inside and outside the facility, purple tracks made by Mondo have been installed. Mondo is the Italian company that has been producing athletics tracks for the Olympics since 1976. In 2021, for the Tokyo Olympics, Mondo created an innovative track that allowed athletes to bounce thanks to a special type of rubber. The total cost was estimated at about 1.5 million dollars, and according to statistics provided by World Athletics, there were twelve Olympic records, 28 continental records, 151 national records, but most importantly, three world records in Tokyo, including that of Karsten Warholm in the 400-meter hurdles in such a fast race that even the second-place finisher would have beaten the world record. A highly technological track designed to enhance athletes' performances, while aesthetically, it did not stray from tradition, featuring a shade of red that recalled the classic brick-orange color of athletics tracks.

For the Paris edition, Mondo decided to take a completely different approach. In this regard, L'Equipe revealed a curious detail last March, namely that the shade of purple that has been adopted was not originally present in Mondo's catalog. “The look of the Games includes three colors for all competition venues: blue, green, and purple. We decided on this track to use the color purple in different shades: lighter for the track, darker for the service areas. Gray was then chosen for the outer part of the curves, reminiscent of the ash-colored tracks that existed 100 years ago for the 1924 Paris Olympic Games,” declared Alain Blondel, the athletics sports manager for Paris 2024, last April when the track was installed inside the stadium. Blondel also added: “We worked hard on the colors so that they could emerge in the best shades to highlight the athletes. It’s a track, it has to be beautiful, but above all, it’s a stage on which the athletes will perform. What’s really important is that the colors and the athletes stand out.”

As mentioned, it is a Made in Italy track, which could allow athletes to improve their performance by 1-2%, designed by Mondo in collaboration with Nieddittas, a cooperative of fishermen from the province of Oristano. The total cost has not yet been reported, but the two companies have joined forces to develop a new recycled granulated material that also includes crushed shellfish shells. This is an initial product with the ultimate goal of developing a new production chain to create flooring using recycled materials. Indeed, about 50% of the 21,000 square meters of this new track has been made with recycled or recyclable materials that can be reused after the Paris Olympics.