July 24, 2012 8:00 am The humans at the olympics are at the
height of athletic achievement, finely engineered bodies for
very specific tasks. But beneath their feet is another highly
engineered entity: the track. London’s track was designed by
Mondo, the same company who designed the track for Barcelona’s
Olympics, back in 1992. There are a few cool things about the
Mondo track, the BBC reports: Unlike other track designs that
combine traction and shock-absorption in an upper layer of
rubber granules, the Mondo track separates these functions, with
a cushion backing for shock absorption and a solid upper layer
that optimises slip resistance, traction and durability. That
means that the spikes that some athletes wear on their shoes to
grab onto the track don’t need to be as long to get a good hold.
Which, if you’re a sprinter, is great, because that means less
energy is going into penetrating the track and then ripping
those spikes out as you run. It might seem like a tiny
difference, but when a race is won by