To the casual observer one athletics track probably looks much like another . But when the Olympic Games open in Paris on Friday, it will be difficult to miss the purple track at the Stade de France. Describing its colour as "audacious", Maurizio Stroppiana, whose company made the track, says it will help people "instantly recognise" the Paris Games.
It took 10 wet and cold weeks to lay the track at the Stade de France after the Rugby World Cup ended in October of last year. "Finally, when we see it installed, it's absolutely beautiful," says Mr Stroppiana, whose Mondo Group, based in the Italian town of Alba, has made every Olympic track since 1976. The company, named after its founder Edmondo Stroppiana, began making rubber bicycle tyres in post-war Italy, moving into tracks in 1972.
It says the Paris track is its fastest yet, 2% faster than Tokyo's in 2020. Beneath the purple lies a rubber track with two layers. The lower level has honeycomb cells, where air absorbs the shock of your foot landing, then pushes out, feeding the energy back as your foot takes off.
Tracks have come a long way since Sir Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile at the University of Oxford's Iffley Road facility in 1954. That record was set on a cinder track, considered the best surface at the time. Sir Roger, who was president of the Oxford University Athletics Club, organised the new track to replace its bumpy predecessor.
"He decided a new 440-yard (402m) cinder track had to be built.