A major leap in track technology
Mexico 1968 was the first Olympic Games to use an artificial all-weather athletics track. A considerable improvement on the cinder running tracks of old, synthetic tracks have been used at every Olympic Games since.
The new track allowed athletes to improve their performances by giving them a harder, more uniform surface to run on and thereby increase their energy return. Combined with Mexico City’s high altitude, the synthetic running surface led to no fewer than nine world and Olympic records being set in the men’s sprint, relay and middle-distance events and five in the women’s sprint.
The quest for improved performance led to manufacturers making increasingly harder tracks for sprinters in the years that followed. Middle- and long-distance runners began complaining of pain and injuries after races, however. In response, the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) introduced specifications and testing protocols for synthetic tracks in 1989.