Roma 2024 will be the fourth time in the last 20 years that stadia staging the European Athletics Championships will have Mondo athletics tracks.
The Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships will feature new Mondo athletics tracks in the historic Stadio Olimpico and the Stadio del Marmi.
The Stadio Olimpico – host to the 1960 Olympic Games, 1974 European Athletics Championships and 1987 World Athletics Championships as well as many other major athletics meetings over the years – will be the main competition venue and had a MondotrackTM WS track installed there in October 2023.
Nestling alongside the Stadio Olimpico, the Stadio de Marmi – Stadium of Marble – will be used as a training venue and warmup area for the championships and had a Sportflex Super X TM 720 track installed just a few weeks after the work on its ‘big brother’ was completed.
Roma 2024 will be the fourth time in the last 20 years that stadia staging the European Athletics Championships will have Mondo athletics tracks.
Göteborg 2006, Barcelona 2010 and Helsinki 2012 were all contested on Mondo tracks and produced outstanding athletics feats.
Spazio Mondo turns back the clock and recalls ten of the most memorable moments from those three championships.
The charismatic sprinter retained his 100m title from four years earlier in a championship record 9.99 then won the 200m gold in a Portuguese record of 20.01, becoming the first man since Italy’s Pietro Mennea in 1978 to do this particular double.
The Belgian, who was to triumph two years later at the 2008 Olympic Games, came out on top thanks to her first-time clearance at 2.03m – which still equals the championship record ahead of Roma 2024 – in a terrific contest which saw four women go higher than two metres.
The Swedish combined events superstar delighted the home crowd by retaining her heptathlon crown – and continuing her unbeaten record in the seven-event discipline – while also posting a championship record of 6740 points when finishing more than 300 points clear of her nearest rival.
The Frenchman won in a championship record of 8:07.87, a mark which is still unbeaten 14 years later, after a thralling duel with his compatriot Bob Tahri, with Mehissi going on to have three more continental victories over the barriers.
The German took advantage of a helpful 1.6 metres-per-second following wind to fly out to what was then a championship record and personal best of 8.47m, and he took the gold medal with a 23cm margin of victory.
Ennis had finished eighth in Göteborg four years earlier but clinched the gold medal in Catalan city’s famous Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys with a championship record of 6823 points, which remains as the best ever at a European Athletics Championships ahead of Roma 2024.
As a prelude to his double Olympic triumph little more than a month later, the phenomenal Briton became the first man in the Championships' 78-year history to retain the 5000m title and did so with an emphatic 53.69 last lap. He stopped the clock in 13:29.81, the fastest winning time since 1990.
Voted as the man of the meeting by the assembled media in the Finnish capital, the French future world record holder cleared a world-leading 5.97m to retain his continental crown from two years earlier in Barcelona.
The Bulgarian’s winning time of 11.28 into a stiff breeze was nothing special – and she had run a European-lead of 11.06 in her heat – but her emotional victory was the culmination of a seven-year battle to regain her status as one of the world’s top sprinters after sustaining a badly broken leg in 2005.
The Ukrainian bounded out to a world-leading and personal best distance of 14.99m with her opening jump for the second of her three European Athletics Championships gold medals. All four of her valid jumps in Helsinki were better than anyone else managed.