Purple track: 2024 Olympics: the pretty purple track seduces in Paris

In a departure from the traditional brick red colour, the track on which Olympic track and field champions are crowned in Paris is a vibrant purple – and the athletes seem rather happy with the colour so far.

“It all radiates light,” said Thea LaFond, who will aim for Dominica’s first Olympic medal when she competes in the triple jump final later Saturday.

“It’s probably very girly to say, ah I think that’s so cute, but I do it – a purple track, how, like, fabulous!”

Camille Yvinec, Paris 2024’s brand identity director, explained that her teams worked for two years on the colour palette. The final choice was purple for the Stade de France track, in reference to the lavender fields in the south of France, where cities like Nice and Marseille host some of the Olympic events.

“We wanted a color palette that was, above all, sophisticated,” Yvinec explained. It moves away from the primary colors of the Olympic rings and breaks with the traditional colors of the track, she added.

The 2016 Rio Olympics had a blue running track, and Madrid already has a green running track, so Paris had to think outside the box.

“It’s really beautiful,” Ukrainian high jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh said after qualifying for the final, adding that it was the first purple track she had ever seen in her life. “It’s really cool, it’s really the new color of the Olympics.” American athlete Shamier Little embraced this vision of purple by dyeing her hair a matching shade.

“Purple has always been a favorite theme of mine,” she said after she and her relay partners broke the 4×400-meter world record. “Before I started this, I had a vision. I found a hairdresser and just asked him to execute my vision and he did it perfectly.”

Sportswear brands such as Nike, Adidas and Puma have also geared up for purple, producing shoes in garish orange and yellow hues to contrast with the track.

Ugandan Joshua Cheptegei, gold medallist in the 10,000 metres on Friday, was among the athletes wearing fluorescent orange spikes that contrasted with purple, ensuring maximum visibility, in the stadium and on television, of the latest “super-shoe” technology.

Parisian gymnasts also praised the pastel colour palette of the Bercy Arena where they compete, saying the pale green tones of equipment such as the pommel horse were calming.