Fastest track ever begs questions
ITALY-BASED COMPANY Mondo is busy fine-tuning the building of a vibrant purple track for the Olympic Games in Paris, France, from July 26 -11 August. Christopher Samuda, president of the Jamaica Olympic Association (JOA), said the move is helping to redefine sport.
“The introduction for the Paris Games in Athletics of the Italian-made Mondo Vibrant Purple Track is really symptomatic of the fact that science and technology are redefining, if not, reengineering sport,” said Samuda.
In a recent interview with Inside The Games, Maurizio Stroppiana, vicepresident of Mondo’s sports division, revealed that minor tweaks were done to the track which was used for the previous Tokyo Olympics which augurs well for the athletes set to perform at the blue-riband event later this summer.
“We have changed the design of the cells in the lower layer of the track compared to what was used in Tokyo. This reduces the loss of energy for the athletes and returns it at the best possible point in their movement,” Stroppiana explained.
The track is expected to offer faster performances than the one used at the previous Olympics where three world records – women’s triple jump, men’s and women’s 400-metre hurdles – were broken. According to President Samuda, making the track faster does create the risk of invalidating the achievements of athletes of former generations.
“This track, potentially, will be the fastest ever and records more than likely will be threatened. Whereas we must support advances in the sciences as tools of understanding better and modernising life and living, there is a risk that successive generations should not gain an advantage that will discount the excellence of those who preceded who did not benefit from such advances,” said Samuda.
Samuda also looked at the converse scenario, where it is the hard work of the new generation of athletes that gets invalidated.
“The jury is still out on this issue but if the march in invention in sport continues, performances in the future will become less human and more robotic. Also, mental and physical prowess, as we know them today, may somewhat give way to laboratory creativity and innovation of non-athletes.”