When we watch a race athleticsit comes naturally to us to focus on athletes and their performances. Much more rarely do we focus on what lies beneath their feet: the track. Yet, the evolution of the surfaces on which athletics compete is one of the factors that have most contributed to changing performances throughout history. From the dirt tracks of the first modern Olympics to the synthetic and engineered surfaces of today, the track has gone from a simple support to a truly active element of performance.
From origins to ash: natural surfaces and unstable performance
In the first editions of the modern Olympics, starting from the Athens Games of 1896, the competitions were played on natural surfaces: clay, sand or compacted gravel. They were rudimentary tracks, very variable and strongly influenced by atmospheric conditions. A hot and dry climate can lead to a hard and dusty track, a humid or, even worse, rainy climate risks ruining the track and making it muddy.
In the first half of the twentieth century the use of the so-called spread cinder tracksslopes with surface in ash obtained from the combustion of coal. This solution represented a first attempt at standardization, making the surfaces more draining and more uniform than clay.
All these solutions had important limitations: they absorbed part of the energy produced by the athlete, rendering not very efficient the race, and were unable to guarantee comparable performance from one race to the next. Between the 1950s and 1960s, with the increase in international competitiveness and the improvement of technologies linked to sports performance (electronic timing, specific footwear, careful nutrition), the need emerged for more reliable surfaces on which to compete and the first experiments with artificial materials. The goal was to create “all weather” tracks that can be used in any climatic condition, maintaining constant characteristics in each race location and standardizing the results obtained globally.
1968 and the Tartan Revolution
The real turning point came at the Olympics Mexico City of 1968: for the first time, athletics races were held on a synthetic surface: the Tartandeveloped by the US company 3M. It is a polyurethane-based compound, uniform, less subject to deformation and above all more “reactive”: part of the energy imparted by the athlete, rather than being dispersed, is returned during the push phase.
This is not a simple technical innovation, but a paradigm shift, because the track stops being a neutral element and becomes an integral part of the performance. The athletes were immediately enthusiastic and the results of those Games speak clearly: in athletics, considering jumps, throws and runs under 1500 metres, 14 gold medals out of 28 established the new world recordand another 11 the Olympic record.
Extraordinary numbers which, in that specific case, must also be thanked for the altitude at which those races were held. Mexico City is located approx 2,200 meters above sea level, an altitude that makes the air less dense, and offers less aerodynamic resistance in disciplines that require more explosiveness, such as sprinting and jumping. It is in this context that some of the most incredible performances in history are recorded, such as the “leap of the century” of Bob Beamon. The American improved the previous world record in the long jump by 55 centimetres, landing at 8.90 metres. A record that will stand until 1991 and which still represents the Olympic record and the second best measurement ever recorded after Mike Powell’s 8.95m at the Tokyo World Championships.
In that same Olympics the high jump revolution also took place, with the American Dick Fosbury being the first, at such an important event, to clear the bar with a curved run-up and jumping with his back facing downwards. The “Fosbury Flop” will change the history of the high jump forever, causing the ventral style used up to that point to retire within a few years.
The modern era: engineered tracks and ever-improving performance
After 1968, synthetic tracks quickly became the standard globally. In the following years, specialized companies began to develop increasingly sophisticated surfaces, introducing new materials designed to optimize springback and stability. Today it is Italian World to create the track surfaces used in the Olympics and major international athletics events.
Modern tracks are the result of careful engineering: every parameter, from stiffness to shock absorption capacity, is calibrated to maximize performance and reduce the risk of injury.
If in the past performance depended almost exclusively on the athlete, today it is the result of a more complex system, in which the racing surface also plays a decisive role. In fact, we talk about “fast tracks” And “slow tracks” referring to the different surfaces of the most important athletics tracks in the world, with a continuous race to have increasingly high-performance surfaces (each stadium would like to boast the honor of having hosted a certain world record), but always respecting the strict construction standards imposed by World Athletics.
