Ready, set, grow

Usain Bolt appreciates a good running-track

FASTER, higher, farther: such are the hopes of Mondo, a sports-equipment maker, for athletes at the 2012 London Olympic games. Engineers, chemists and biomechanics scientists at the firm, the games' supplier of running track and surfaces for ten other sports, have developed materials to help the athletes perform their best. After visiting Mondo's factory in a village south of Turin on February 23rd, officials from London gave their approval for the brick-red strips of rubber composite that the firm will soon begin installing.

Set up in 1948, the year that London last hosted the Olympics, Mondo progressed from making rubber balls for a local fist-ball game to making floors for hospitals, gyms and trains. Then Ferruccio Stroppiana, its founder, and his brother Elio realised they could make much higher-quality surfaces by prefabricating them rather than spreading the materials on-site.

The firm installed its first prefabricated running track in Italy in 1972 and four years later did training tracks for the Montreal Olympics. It then had 200 workers. Now it employs 1,500 and has factories in Canada, Spain, China and Luxembourg as well as Italy. It lays around 150 tracks a year, with sales last year of €340m ($469m). “We're profitable but too many Olympics would put us out of business,” jests Maurizio Stroppiana, the general manager. Winning a contract to supply the games does little for profits—London's Olympics will generate only around €6m of revenues—but is good marketing.

How did a family firm in a rural area best known for producing fine wines like Barolo become a world-beater? The Stroppiana brothers' intuition that prefabrication would produce better tracks was the starting-point. Since then Mondo has invested heavily in research and development, on which it spends about 5% of revenues and employs 40 people. At the heart of the work are the dynamics of running: how athletes place their feet; what forces are involved; and how surfaces respond in terms of grip, friction, elasticity, energy return and shock absorption. Mondo protects its intellectual property with more than 200 patents. The Olympic authorities are keen on technological advances, and anything that helps runners break records will add to the excitement for spectators.

In London, as in previous Olympics, the firm will be responsible for maintaining as well as installing the tracks, crucial services which help it fend off competition. Besides Polytan, a longstanding German rival, Chinese firms have entered the fray using technology that, according to Mr Stroppiana, copies Mondo's. They are fighting over markets that are declining in Europe and static in North America, regions where installations of new tracks together amount to about 800 a year. Only emerging economies offer growth.

Four world track records were broken in the Beijing games in 2008. Mr Stroppiana notes that new records are mainly down to the athletes' training, their performance on the day, the weather and encouragement from spectators. But he can be sure that if records do not fall in London, some people will blame the track.