The purple vulcanized rubber crawler, manufactured in a factory in northern Italy, will be run by the world's fastest athletes at the Paris Olympics. They are created with one clear goal.
record.
After three world records and 12 Olympic marks were set on the Tokyo track three years ago, more records are expected to be set at the Stade de France.
That's why Mondo, which has provided the track for every Summer Games since Montreal in 1976, went back to square one after Tokyo.
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 find this truck more responsive and better suited to their sport,” Maurizio Stropiana, Mondo's vice president of sports, said during a press tour at the company's factory in Alba, near Turin. You'll feel that way,” he said.
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.”
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, Mirtha 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.
“[Construction of temporary pools]has a big advantage because you can reinstall the pool after the event,” said Mirta CEO Roberto Colletto.
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 (TV) cameras, especially now with high resolution, 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. .”
There is also a new system designed to reduce the effects of chlorine in water and air that will be introduced in Paris.
So how much water does it take to fill an Olympic pool? Depending on the depth of the pool, swimming can range from 2 to 3 meters, but between 2.5 million and 4 million liters of water are required.
“That means a lot of water has to be poured into these pools,” Collette said.
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Associated Press photographer Luca Bruno and Alba and Castiglione delle Stiviere video producer Brian Hendry contributed to this report.
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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
