That's why Mondo, which has provided the trucks for every Summer Games since Montreal in 1976, went back to square one after the Japan Games.
With the help of athlete feedback and extensive testing, a new generation of granules with more elasticity and stickiness is being used to produce the upper layer of rubber for the Paris track.
Multiple algorithms were considered before finding a more optimal shape and dimensions for the air cells in the truck, designed to minimize energy loss and improve performance.
In other words, this innovation aims to help Olympic athletes run faster, jump higher, and leap farther. Similar to the Olympic motto: “Faster, Higher, Stronger, Together.”
“Athletes will find this track more responsive and better suited to their sport,” said Maurizio Stropiana, vice president of sports at Mondo.
The truck will be built over two days this week, rolled up for transport to France and installed at the Stade de France next week, weather permitting.
This will be the third time Monde has installed a new track at the Stade de France, the first being in 2003 when the World Athletics Championships were held there.
“It's placed on an asphalt base and glued in place,” Stroppiana said. “It's a pretty quick process. Due to limited time and weather, we're going to be working around the clock.”
Another novelty for Paris is the track color, which will be purple for the first time at the Olympics.
“This color was a courageous decision by the local organizing committee,” Stroppiana said. “I've never done this color before. It's a light mauve and a dark purple. It reminds me of French landscapes.”
A three-hour drive across the country is the headquarters of another Italian company, Mirta Pools, a major Olympic sports supplier.
Mirta has created 24 pools in Paris for swimming, diving, water polo and artistic swimming, including training facilities.
This will be the sixth Olympics that Mirta will provide a pool.
For the swimming race at La Defense Arena, Mirta is installing two temporary pools within the rugby stadium. One for competition and one for warm-up and training.
The stainless steel modules, produced at the Mirta factory in Castiglione delle Stiviere near Verona, will be shipped to France and bolted together to form the walls and floor of the pool.
Mirta CEO Roberto Coletto said building a temporary pool “has a huge advantage because it allows us to reinstall the pool after the event.”
For example, the pool used at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, where six world records were set in swimming, was reused at last year's World Championships in Fukuoka and reinstalled at a local school in Japan.
Beyond pool walls and floors, water treatment has become increasingly important for Olympic pools.
“Water clarity is very important because of underwater television cameras, especially now with high definition, which requires extreme clarity,” Colette said.
“To achieve this, we have developed a special filtration and water treatment system. We also have a variable speed bump system that accelerates or decelerates the speed of the water flow depending on competition or non-competition mode. .”
