Mondo, the maker of Olympic tracks since 1976, wanted something new for 2024. Dozens of hues and 200,000-plus square feet of rubber later, the Stade de France has a daring, new look.
In Piedmont’s wine country, near the town of Alba in northern Italy, steep hills dot nearby horizons, famous for Barolo grapes. Castles loom, standing sentry over vineyards, alongside one company that’s changing track and field.
The structure of a prefabricated athletics track is complex. Its upper layer ensures optimal contact between the shoe and the surface and water drainage; the lower layer, with a lower density to be compressible and air cells characterized by a precise geometric shape, works by accumulating and returning energy to the athlete.
For the purple track, that meant conversations with Olympic organizers, incorporating requests into designs, making decisions about the three colors and constructing 17,000 square meters of surface along with a 7,200 square-meter warm-up track. Stroppiana is the vice president of Mondo’s “sports sector.” He recognizes his company’s connections to the Olympic track stadium, Stade de France—Mondo built its first track in 1998 and a newer version in 2003 for the world championships. He knows that roughly 74,000 people will filter daily inside a space so large it requiredmassive video screens, each about the size of regulation tennis courts, and needed 650 new light banks.
Proof, as always in the sport, is delivered on the track. Since Mondo’s first Olympic track, more than 300 world records have been broken on its surfaces. More records are expected to fall in upcoming Olympic and Paralympic competitions. Athletes also set new marks in Olympic competitions and national competitions. Stroppiana calls this focus “the best way to continue to be in business” and “the rule of the market,” one never to stray from.
“The stage matters,” Stroppiana says, adding later, “With so much care and attention placed on improving sporting performance, it is surely just a matter of time before more world records are broken.”
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