Olympics 2024: Why is the athletics track purple at the Paris Olympics?

The purple track for the Paris Olympics has been revealed ahead of this week’s opening ceremony.

The Paris Olympics officially open on Saturday morning, although the action began on Thursday NZT with the Oly Whites and men’s rugby sevens team beginning group play.

The Stade de France, host of last year’s Rugby World Cup final, will stage the track and field events and the track will be purple for the first time.

Alain Blondel, sports manager in charge of athletics for Paris 2024, explained the colour choice earlier in the year.

“The big part of the job was to come up with a track that was different from what we had seen, to maintain the creative approach that the Organising Committee has had since it was set up, to go a little bit outside the box,” he explained, before elaborating on the choice of this shade as reminiscent of lavender,” he told Olympics.com in April.

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“The look of the Games includes three colours for all the competition venues: blue, green and purple. We decided on this purple track with different tones: lighter for the track, darker for the service areas, and grey for the turns at the end of the bend, reminding of the ash-coloured tracks that were there 100 years ago for the Olympic Games Paris 1924.”

The purple colour, never seen before for an athletics track, has been the result of a long process.

“We had to work hard on the colours, so that they came out in the best possible tones to highlight the athletes. It’s a track, it has to be pretty, but above all it’s a stage on which the athletes are going to perform. What’s really important is that the colours and the athletes stand out,” said Blondel, a former European decathlon champion.

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— The Olympic Games (@Olympics) July 21, 2024