Utilita Arena Birmingham, Great Britain’s premier indoor athletics venue, is in the process of getting a new portable banked track ahead of it staging the 2023 World Athletics Indoor Tour Final on Saturday 25 February.
The renovation of the Mondo athletics track, installed in 1991, involves its replacement with a portable banked structure integrated with a sports surface for Mondo athletics competitions. It will host the UK Athletics Indoor Championships which will take place on 18 and 19 February.
The history of the Utilita Arena Birmingham has already seen a long list of memorable feats since it was opened 32 years ago, with it quickly becoming Britain’s premier indoor athletics facility.
The first global superlatives were achieved 12 months after its inauguration when, at the same meeting in 1992, Algeria’s Noureddine Morceli reduced the world indoor 1000m mark to 2:15.26 and barely 30 minutes later local heroine Liz McColgan ran a gun-to-tape 5000m world record of 15:03.17 to take more than 10 seconds from the previous mark.
In the three decades since then the revision of the athletics record books has continued unabated, partly thanks to the Mondo athletics track which has undergone several renovations.
To date, not less than 12 world indoor records or world bests have been achieved on the various generations of Mondo athletics tracks laid down at the Utilita Arena Birmingham along with a myriad of continental and national records.
Many have been middle- and long-distance events from 1000m upwards but a notable exception was Poland’s inspired 4x400m victory at the 2018 World Athletics Indoor Championships when they upset the odds and beat the hugely favoured USA quartet. Anchor leg runner Jakub Krzewina was Poland’s hero on that day. Taking over around four metres in arrears of the final US runner, Krzewina delivered a phenomenal stint around two laps of the track before stopping the clock in 3:01.77.
In a meeting which saw six championship records, this was arguably the highlight and still lingers in the memory almost five years later.
The 2018 championships were the second time in 15 years that the world’s top athletes had converged on Birmingham for the most important indoor athletics event in the world.
In 2003, there had been one world record – Svetlana Feofanova from Russia clearing 4.80m for pole vault gold – six continental records and no less than 55 national records while at the 2007 European Athletics Indoor Championships at the same venue there were nine world-leading indoor marks for that season.
Before the installation got underway, representatives of Birmingham City Council and Mondo’s UK reseller DYNAMIK Sports Surfaces Ltd visited Mondo’s offices and factory in Alba in December to see the finishing touches being applied to the track before being shipped to Britain’s Second City.
Birmingham City Council Sports Events Manager Laura Denham expanded on the reasons the city opted for Mondo once more.
“Our existing track in the Arena was built in 1991 and although it had some refurbishments over the years, it was time to replace it.
“The city hosted the Commonwealth Games last summer and that created a major conversation about its legacy and what that means to having sports events come to the city,” reflected Denham.
“Mondo has a deep-rooted history and relationship with Birmingham with regards to athletics and they always feel like a safe pair of hands. They know our venue, they know our city, and they absolutely know athletics so Birmingham City Council know they will deliver a high-quality product and a really good service.
“If the old track represented more than 30 years of athletics history, I believe the new track will represent a new exciting era for athletics in Birmingham, and sport in general,” she added.
DYNAMIK Sports Surfaces Ltd Managing Director Craig Jack explained how his company fit into the equation with the installation of the new track.
“We are the UK partners for Mondo indoor sports flooring, including indoor athletics tracks which have gained the enviable and justifiable reputation of being ‘The Best of the Best’.
“DYNAMIK is supporting the local community by creating a socially responsible and environmentally sustainable environment for this track to be installed and used.
“This aspect is really important to both DYNAMIK and Mondo but is equally important to our clients, in this instance Birmingham City Council,” commented Jack.
“In 1991, Birmingham was proud to be the first UK portable athletics track installation and, at the time, it was the best track you could get. So, the challenge was to improve something that is already close-to-perfect, and this is what we are trying to do with this new installation.
“Mondo R&D have an impressive appetite to find improvements in their track’s performance and we are sure that we are about to deliver to Birmingham a fantastic track that should last as long as the old one,” he added.
If you want to see for yourself Mondo’s new Birmingham athletics track with world-class athletes in action, you just have to follow the two sporting events scheduled for February. For more information on the World Indoor Tour browse World Athletics pages.
MONDO designs, produces, and installs modular athletic tracks, ideal for sports facilities that are not dedicated exclusively to athletics.
In particular, portable banked tracks from Mondo can be dismantled and stored elsewhere so the area occupied by the track can be used for other events.
This is possible due to Mondo’s proprietary technology. The company designed a system that allows all the track’s pieces to be disassembled and assembled through a quick coupling system, and the customer can perform these operations without complex equipment.
All tracks are designed by Mondo follow the World Athletics standards and regulations, based on the space available to the client and in compliance with building constraints.