The very first roll of the track that will grace the stadium in Budapest’s National Athletics Center – which will stage the World Athletics Championships Budapest 23 next August – was unfurled on Friday 4 November. Work on the track had started at the end of October with the stabilisation of the foundations, following 20 months of stadium construction work once the demolition of the former industrial park on which the Center is located had taken place in December 2020.
However, it was the right moment for a formal dedication, with local dignitaries and media present; on hand to help roll out the first section of track was Balázs Baji, the 2017 World Athletics Championships 110m hurdles bronze medallist.
The track installation will now continue at a fast pace with the aim of completing this stage of the work in the coming weeks.
"The World Athletics Championships between 19-27 of August next year will be the biggest sporting event of 2023, watched by more than a billion people. It is with great honour and pride that this will be hosted by Budapest in our newly built athletics centre,” commented Budapest 23 Local Organising Committee CEO Balazs Nemeth.
“I am sure that the superheroes of athletics will be able to achieve many records, thanks in part to the outstanding quality of the track," added Nemeth, who helped Baji ceremonially lay the first five metres of track.
Located on the banks of the River Danube in Budapest’s 9th district, just to the south of the city centre, the National Athletics Center and its associated stadium will be a world-class facility that will provide a focal point for athletics, not just in Hungary but across central Europe.
The athletics track – pre-manufactured in a controlled factory environment at Mondo’s world headquarters in the northern Italian town of Alba – that is being installed in the Hungarian capital is a version of the Mondotrack WS tracks that have been used for the athletics events at the last two Olympic Games in Rio and Tokyo.
This product has had wide-spread recognition as the most technologically advance athletics performance surfaces in the world. Although the track is designed to provide a surface for high-level performance it will also be a legacy that will be extended to everyone for decades. Afterwards the Championships, and for years to come, a new generation of Hungarian athletes will have one of the world’s finest training facilities at their disposal.
"After the Championships, once the temporary seating has been removed, a sports park and running track will be available under the roof cover and the stadium with all its facilities will be open to the public. The Center will become part of the public green park opened on the bank of the Danube", commented Marcel Ferencz, senior designer of Napur Architect Kft, explaining the creative vision from which the National Athletics Center was born.
From an initial analysis of the project, it emerged that the main objective was to integrate the new building into the suggestive natural environment, to pay homage to the environmental values of the area; Marcel Ferencz confirmed: "We are very happy that instead of a high-density private residential project, we have a low-density public building, with a green park on the bank of the Danube River, which creates a space available to everyone. The bank of our most important river, the Danube, is not accessible to the public in most of the capital, so it leaves this huge potential untapped: we are very happy with the choice of creating a public space instead of a private one, which will return the Danube to its rightful owners, the citizens".
With sustainability at the heart of Budapest's plans for the 2023 World Athletics Championships, the designers included several "green" elements in their design for the National Athletics Centre. Marcel Ferencz said: "The heating and cooling systems are designed with zero carbon technologies, based on a ground source heat pump system with a pipe system that extends several km under the green park in front of the 'building, of which only 30% of its internal surface area is heated and cooled - said Marcel Ferencz - The building was awarded a Breeam Very Good rating by BRE London during the design phase.”
More than 14,000m2 of athletics track is being laid in the National Athletics Center, which equates to more than 700 rolls of surface material – with each roll containing approximately 20 metres of track – that has been shipped from Alba.
In turn, by completion, workers will have spent approximately 2400 man-hours on site installing the track and making sure that everything is perfect well in advance of the Championships.
This is the 13th time that Mondo will have provided the track for the main stadium hosting the World Athletics Championships.
The choice of Mondo has also become ever more popular among host cities and stadium architects for one of the most important sports events in the world.
No less than six of the last seven World Athletics Championships held since 2011 have featured Mondo tracks.