In the event you’ve been tuning in to occasions just like the pole vault, steeplechase, or 100-meter sprint on the Paris Video games, you may’ve seen one thing somewhat…totally different in regards to the Olympic observe. And, no, your TV’s show isn’t glitching: The floor actually is purple.
Nicely, to be particular, two totally different shades of purple: Organizers selected a fragile lavender for the portion that athletes compete on, and a deeper violet for the technical areas. (Plus a pleasant complementary grey as an accent colour, to recall to mind the asphalt observe used the final time Paris hosted the Video games, approach again in 1924.)
PARIS, FRANCE – AUGUST 04: A basic view of athletes on the blocks earlier than beginning throughout the Males’s 100m Remaining on day 9 of the Olympic Video games Paris 2024 at Stade de France on August 04, 2024 in Paris, France. (Picture by Michael Reaves/Getty Photographs)Michael Reaves/Getty Photographs
As for why the observe is purple (reasonably than the standard purple and even blue)? It primarily comes all the way down to aesthetics: Organizers wished the Paris observe to face out. In reality, the observe is the primary of its colour to see competitors, as Olympics.com studies. Revealed a couple of months earlier than the Olympics, the hue was chosen by Paris Video games officers in keeping with the necessities of World Athletics and Olympic Broadcasting Companies (OBS), the company that produces protection of the Olympic and Paralympic Video games, and the Italian agency Mondo was commissioned to do the development.
One different issue performed a task within the resolution as properly: The viewing expertise. The purple observe merely lends itself higher to the display, providing higher distinction so to catch each little bit of the motion, in keeping with Olympics.com.
TOPSHOT – Athletes compete within the girls’s 1500m warmth of the athletics occasion on the Paris 2024 Olympic Video games at Stade de France in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, on August 6, 2024. (Picture by Antonin THUILLIER / AFP) (Picture by ANTONIN THUILLIER/AFP through Getty Photographs)ANTONIN THUILLIER/Getty Photographs
“We needed to work arduous on the colours, in order that the shades would work finest to spotlight the athletes. It’s a observe, it needs to be fairly, however above all it’s a stage on which the athletes are going to carry out. What’s essential is that the colours and the athletes stand out,” Alain Blondel, athletics and para-athletics supervisor for Paris 2024, advised Olympics.com in April.
And it is likely to be wishful pondering, however we’d wish to consider there’s one different clarification as properly—a symbolic one. In any case, purple is a colour historically related to kings and queens—and what are Olympic athletes however athletic royalty?
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