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.
Mondo doesn’t just make tracks. Its roughly 100 employees—among them: chemists, engineers and physicists—fashion some of the world’s fastest, for Olympic Games and world championships. They are surfaces that can change slightly in shape, color and material but never shift in their shared overall focus to please the world’s best with the factor they most care about: speed.
Track designs—and actual tracks—take shape in this valley of grapes and castles, including Mondo’s latest marquee creation. In Paris, the track and field portion of the Olympics will begin Aug. 1 (men’s 20-kilometer race walk) and conclude Aug. 11 (women’s marathon). In between, 46 of 48 total events will unfold on Mondo’s latest track, which happens to be … purple.
Founded in 1948, Mondo formed from its earliest specialty: rubber flooring. It made its first Olympic track back in ’76, for the Montreal Games. Mondo has built every subsequent Olympic track; this year’s marks iteration No. 13.
Mondo helped move the sport from cinder tracks to synthetic versions. It tested the latter for the first time in Montreal, after installing a version that had been developed for horse racing as a starting point. Engineers have developed and tweaked Mondo’s tech within that world ever since, which helped Mondo shift the sport again, into the more preferred vulcanized rubber surface enjoyed by today’s stars. And as Mondo’s place within this odd sports space expanded, so did its aims, the scale of its logistics and the level of coordination required to ensure quality control.
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. The careful choice of material for the upper layer and the design of the shape of the lower air cells make it possible to identify the best compromise: accumulating enough energy to prevent injuries to athletes and reduce strain on their joints, but also accompanying the athletic gesture so that the energy is returned to the athlete in an ideal way for optimal execution.
Most tracks are red-brick-clay in color (sometimes described as terracotta). But that’s changing, the shift never more dramatic than for the showcase taking place on an international, purple stage. Olympic organizers long ago noted the colors of these Games—purple, blue and green—and asked if Mondo could incorporate them in some way.
Short answer: Yes.
Studies were commissioned, in-depth analyses were embarked upon. Heavy attention went toward the color scheme, which needed to be decided early in the process so that patents could be submitted and any shade already under patent could be avoided or tweaked. Even after choosing purple, varied tones needed to be considered. Mondo settled on the lighter shade for the track itself, the darker shade for the service areas and the gray shade for turns at the end of bends, which reminded Parisian officials of pictures from the Paris Games in 1924.
Mondo tried out roughly 40 shades before selecting the versions it liked best. Designers tested each not only for aesthetic quality, but also for how each reacted to external factors like UV rays, which wear out all colors at varying speeds over time. Mondo found no patent crossover in any of the shades that it selected. It found that each was strong in UV resistance, especially when compared to other, also viable, purples. At that point, what Mondo executive Maurizio Stroppiana calls their “bold move” could begin to take its oval shape.
The process, generally, works like this: Mondo execs coordinate with national federations and tournament hosts like World Athletics, a partner since 1987. In order to host a world-class competition, Mondo must make about 150 other pieces—cages, carts, starting blocks, take-off boards, mattresses (to land on), hurdles (to jump over)—in addition to the surface.
For the purple track, that meant conversations with Olympic organizers, incorporating requests into designs, making decisions about the three colors (two shades of purple; one lighter, like lavender; the other, darker; another gray) and constructing 17,000 square meters of surface (nearly 183,000 square feet) along with a 7,200 square-meter warm-up track.
Any one track is designed, in part, by several algorithms. When combined, they’re meant to aid decisions for optimal shape and ideal dimensions while incorporating seemingly miniscule details like the air cells inside the lower layers of the track and design tweaks that reduce energy loss, improving performance. Roughly eight years ago, Mondo began soliciting feedback from individual athletes and their teams.
Mondo also sought partners for specific improvements to its process. One, a laboratory, works in granular detail on the first two layers of track asphalt, ensuring it’s properly designed, built and easy to lay down, perfectly flat. The Paris track, for instance, marks the first time a track is primarily purple-hued. Even the glue used for tweaking the surface is purple.
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 required two massive video screens, each about the size of regulation tennis courts, and needed 650 new light banks.
Mondo soon weighed its color and design choices alongside the minimum and maximum requirements laid out by the IOC. Each related to myriad factors: compliance, energy absorption, durability and sustainability.
Next, Mondo began its surface-optimization.
Then: building.
Then: measuring, analyzing, tweaking, adapting, finalizing.
Then: installing more than 1,100 rolls of track that the factory shipped in April.
Mondo officials don’t typically share detailed costs of any track; in part, because there’s nuance in the numbers. A safe range for costs associated with the purple track falls between two million and three million euro (roughly $2.2 million to $3.3 million). Stroppiana says this track landed in the same cost range as the last one in Tokyo.
Every step, Stroppiana says, intends to highlight athletes, their performances and a sport’s shift into faster-faster-faster times. The bonus, Stroppiana says, is that this track, different and purple, is sure to elicit attention all on its own. “Absolutely beautiful,” he says. “Fantastic. Iconic. And it connects to the event.”
The overall Mondo goal never changes: It’s to take the greatness inherent in Noah Lyles, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Sha’Carri Richardson, Rai Benjamin, Alison dos Santos, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, Karsten Warholm, the sprinters from Jamaica and all the rest and amplify everything from their exposure to the fan experience to the most important thing of all—that speed.
In post-event evaluations, one factor matters more than the rest combined: how many athletes stepped onto that track for that world-class competition and set new personal bests. World records are important and fantastic but not the central goal.
Hence the endless tweaks, made during Olympic cycles, before them, after them, made to introduce new technology or implement the same. One model, for example, spit back data that indicated empty areas of stands in specific places—like, in this example, near starting or finish lines—consistently yielded better results. Those who interpret such data can only guess at why, which didn’t stop them from incorporating evidence. Same for advances in technology with running shoes and track spikes and how they all interact with different surfaces.
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 (12 in Tokyo alone) 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. All competitors owe at least a pinch of success to Mondo and its process.
One thing Mondo didn’t consider with the purple track may not be much of a thing at all. There are studies, though none widely circulated, that examined the impact of colors on athletic track performances. Like this analysis from the Osaka University of Health and Sport Sciences, released in 2017. It found that simply wearing goggles with red lenses improved performances of 100-meter and 200-meter specialists, measured by their “anaerobic power.” Wearing blue goggles, in the same study increased “maximum oxygen uptake,” meaning that just by changing the color of the goggles, sprinters exerted more energy.
Will purple—the color, in and of itself—impact Olympic athletes in Paris? No one can say for sure. But, based on the scant information available, the impact would be fractional at most. Told of the one, loosely related study that exists, Stroppiana says he's not aware of any relevant study. He asks a series of questions. Do the different colors of surfaces used in major tennis tournaments factor into outcomes? Not that anyone has proven. How about basketball courts designed in different colors? Nobody has argued that. Football fields? Same.
“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.”
The unveiling of his latest stage marked another sort of race. Stade de France had given up hosting track and field championships years ago; the stadium was primarily used for rugby, soccer and concerts. The first stage of installing the Olympic track unfolded last winter but was limited due to France’s obligations for last year’s Rugby World Cup.
The second stage required waiting until all other events were over. Officials then removed swaths of stands near the track and put the rest of the surface in. Many parts of the surface installed during Phase One required additional repairs at varying levels. Most of the bottom asphalt layer had to be re-done.
Weather provided another twist. On the stretch that the bulk of Phase Two installation would take place, it rained. A lot. For hours. Mondo built tarps to cover areas of installation before officials could begin the actual installation. Each roll of track was made before the surface shipped from Italy to France and was sent ready to install, in rolls, like a big, bouncy, purple carpet.
Those rolls were unfurled, then glued to the floor, then adjusted until every inch lay perfectly flat. Only one point of minor tension surfaced from the … well … surface. All along, Mondo applied for patents for the track it was creating. Delays in securing them meant delays in finalizing the design and shipping the track itself. There were, in the final version, based on the patent machinations, slight differences between the design Mondo first presented and the track it ultimately laid down. Stroppiana says his team informed Olympic officials of those one week before they shipped, causing some consternation. But the patents went through— Stroppiana says they would not have otherwise because presenting patents to a customer before the application is approved kills the application the minute the presentation starts.
Then, all one-thousand-or-so rolls were sent and installed on top of the fixed asphalt base with every other layer glued down (by some 2,800 pots of purple glue) in a matter of weeks. Soon, lines for lanes would be drawn. Tweaks were made: Events moved from one side of the stadium to another while a more centrally located sand pit would host long jump and triple jump competitions with a third lane, positioned in the middle of the typical two, to showcase jump finals in Paris. The track was finalized June 1.
This track isn’t just purple and isn’t just fast. It’s also Mondo’s most sustainable world-class track to date. Recycled products went into the build, each certified to ensure compliance. The percentage of such materials put toward new Olympics tracks has grown from roughly 30% in London to a full 50% in Paris. Stroppiana says Mondo continues to invest in solar energy, claiming its factories now run on nearly one-third solar power. It has introduced more flexibility in recycled materials, introducing one kind of rubber that can be converted later into a different, usable raw material for other tracks. It also developed a source of mineral filler that incorporates ground mussel shells. He envisions Mondo tracks as fully sustainable. When? He says 2030 is a solid target.
Finally, the track that deserved an unveiling got the unveiling it deserved. There was an icon, Carl Lewis—and not just any icon, but winner of nine Olympic golds. He was perched on a track again, primed. Except this track was purple. He wore a suit and dress shoes while standing where middle-distance runners will begin their competitions. It did look beautiful; it was distinct.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Coloring Outside the Lines: A Bold Purple Track Takes Center Stage at Paris Olympics.
