Olympic flooring boosts athletes’ performance

Today’s flooring systems offer unparalleled help to athletes, reducing the risk of impact injuries while improving performance

Rachel Uctas/London

SPORTS SURFACES can have a major impact on an athletes’ performance. They can help runners achieve faster times, and facilitate higher jumps and cushioned landings.

It’s nearly 40 years since the first generation of synthetic sports tracks were introduced to an Olympic audience. In 1968, a track known as Tartan, produced by US technology giant 3M was unveiled at the Mexico Olympics.

Since then, artificial tracks have been developed to such an extent that they can offer performance-enhancing aspects that help athletes to break records, while providing a surface designed to protect the human body from impact injuries.

At the Beijing Olympics, Italian flooring company Mondo, has been selected to provide the track at the Olympic stadium. Mondo is no stranger to Olympic glory, having been the official track supplier for the previous nine Olympic Games. In Beijing, Mondo has produced the athletics track, the basketball and handball courts.

The track at the “Bird’s Nest” national stadium will be made from renewable natural rubber, natural fillers and color pigments. The tracks arrive on site in rolls 46 feet (1.21.8m) wide, which are glued directly onto the asphalt with an adhesive that matches the color of the track. Mondo’s Beijing office offers the advantage of local production.

LENGTHY HISTORY

Mondo’s sports flooring story started in the 1960s, when the company entered the international arena with a revolutionary type of polyurethane (PU) coating using its vulcanized rubber technology. These surfaces gave a soft quality to the track, with protection from impact and good elasticity, especially on bends and during acceleration.

In the early days, the company created Mondotrack FTX, a system using a new honeycomb backing giving improved elasticity and responsiveness. Aspects like this can boost athletic performance, while also cushioning the athlete’s musculo­skeletal system.

A source at Mondo explains the success of Mondo’s tracks “In a nutshell, Mondo’s tracks feature the optimal combination of energy return, shock absorption, and coefficient of friction the three important properties of athletic surfaces. Nearly 230 world records and countless national and personal bests have been set on Mondo tracks.”

While Mondo tracks are fabricated off site, other track systems are laid in a different way. Conica, a division of German chemical giant BASF, for example, is the leading producer of liquid tracks put together on site. Conica began producing liquid plastics for synthetic sports surfaces in 1977, and has since become the world’s leading supplier in this field, having become part of BASF’s Construction and Chemicals Division in 2006.

One of Conica’s most sophisticated tracks is Conipur SW, a sandwich system comprising an elastic layer of recycled rubber granules and a PU binder which is applied in situ to an asphalt substrate with built-in finishers. A pore sealer is then applied, followed by a self-leveling PU coating made of two components which are mixed on site, applied to the appropriate thickness, and spread with colored rubber granules while still liquid. The coating then hardens as a result of the ­reaction of polyols and isocyanates to create a highly elastic PU.

Another product, Conipur M, a solid plastic coating that is one of the fastest of its kind, consists of three consecutively applied layers of self-leveling coating and colored ethylene-propylene-diene monomer rubber (EPDM) granules. This type of track boasts good flexibility in the bottom two layers, which improves impact absorption.

“These kinds of track can have a lifespan of 20 years”, says Ralph Bergs, Conica’s strategic manager for sports, “depending on the usage, the climate and the system used.” The major stadia use the top-quality systems that are durable, even when the surface begins to wear, Bergs points out. “It is always possible to resurface the track to make it last for another 10-20 years. This is both economical and good for the environment.”

Retopping is a fairly straightforward operation, in which a primer is applied to a clean track and another layer of Conipur is applied.

Alongside its production of sports flooring, Conica also manufactures materials used in the installation of artificial turf, such as adhesives. While the market for sports tracks is fairly steady, there has been a boom in the use of artificial turf since FIFA, the world governing body for football, granted approval to the use of artificial turf.

EXPANDING MARKET

According to Bergs, the market is growing at an estimated 10%/year, against the modest growth of 2%/year for sports surfaces. “One of the benefits of artificial turf is that it is easier to maintain, especially in colder climates like Scandinavia, while it is not necessary to irrigate in hotter regions like Italy and southern Spain,” says Bergs. Regardless of weather conditions, players can be assured that the pitch will remain in perfect condition.

Artificial grass was first developed in the 1970s and by the 1980s, latex bases were used with a sand infill. During the 1990s, recycled tires began to make an appearance as infill. These days, artificial turf is made of polyethylene (PE)/polypropylene (PP), with the fiber backing made of latex and PU.

Mondo has collaborated with a number of universities to develop its own brand of artificial turf, Mondoturf, a system made up of layers comprising a sheet of PE positioned directly on to the soil, a prefabricated fine-tuned elastic mat, the Mondoturf artificial turf surface and the Ecofill infill.

About 70% of this system is based on recycled material the elastic mat is made from tires, while the various membranes started life as plastic bottles. In fact, one soccer pitch incorporates around 7,000 tires, and 42,000 plastic bottles, according to Mondo.

Research and development is geared towards greener and more efficient products. A spokesperson for Mondo emphasises the importance of green flooring, adding: “We have developed synthetic turf systems that are made of recycled products that are better for the environment.”

Bergs concurs that environmentally friendly products are taking center stage: “There are certain standards in the market for indoor surfaces and there have been recent developments in low-emission systems. There are a lot of guidelines, so companies have to be careful about what kind of lacquers are used. We are a market leader in this area.”

Although track and turf are perhaps the most visible of sports surfaces, many other types of flooring play a crucial part in sporting events.

French vinyl flooring manufacturer Gerflor, for example, is the official supplier of sports flooring for the volleyball and table tennis tournaments during the Beijing Olympics, and is another company that boasts a strong track record of supplying at Olympic level. With 14 volleyball courts in seven different locations, and two table tennis sites, Gerflor will provide a total of over 15,000m2 (161,250 square feet) of flooring.

Already, the race to supply the London Olympics in 2012 is on, with the field still wide open. In the meantime, various other sporting events call for high-quality flooring. A new European Standard for sports flooring came into effect in January 2007.

“EN 14904 has raised awareness for sporting requirements across the whole of Europe,” says Hazel Cook, contract marketing manager at Gerflor. “The standard consolidates the legal requirements for sports flooring to include force reduction, vertical deformation and grip-and-slip performance. Essentially, uniform friction should be achieved so that grip-and-slide are consistent across the entire surface. Good shock absorption reduces the risk of injuries sustained by tripping and falling and also cuts down on injuries sustained by hard floor jarring and vibration.”

Mondo keeps on track at Beijing’s “Bird’s Nest” stadium

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