ALBA
\nItalian firm Mondo will supply this summer\u2019s Paris Olympics with a custom purple track which could be the fastest yet for athletes hunting the biggest prizes in sport.
\nBased in the sleepy Piedmont town of Alba which is immersed in vineyards where the grapes for the world-famous Barolo wine ripen in the sun, Mondo first made the track for the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
\nFor Paris \u2014 its 13th Olympics \u2014 it has devised the Mondotrack EB that will host 46 of 48 athletics events of the Games at the Stade de France.
\n\u201cWe have changed the design of the cells on the lower layer of the track compared to the one used in Tokyo,\u201d Maurizio Stroppiana, vice-president of Mondo\u2019s sports division, told media.
\n\u201cThat reduces the energy loss for athletes and sends it back up to them at the best possible point of their movement.\u201d
\nHowever research and development manager Andrea Marenghi says that Mondo cannot \u201cdo whatever we want\u201d with the composition of the track.
\n\u201cThere are very strict criteria set by the IOC because the most important thing is to safeguard the health of the athlete and not impair their technique,\u201d says Marenghi.
\n\u201cAthletes are more high-performance than ever, and the track doesn\u2019t give anything that they don\u2019t already have.\u201d
\nThe Paris track will be a striking purple rather than the traditional terracotta.
\nMarenghi told AFP that the two new shades \u2014 one for the competition areas and another for the technical areas \u2014 will only be used for the Games in Paris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ALBA Italian firm Mondo will supply this summer\u2019s Paris Olympics with a custom purple track which could be the fastest yet for athletes hunting the biggest prizes in sport. Based in the sleepy Piedmont town of Alba which is immersed in vineyards where the grapes for the world-famous Barolo wine ripen in the sun, Mondo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-399643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"yoast_head":"\n