Installed in 2019 next to the Tokyo Olympic Stadium to replace a baseball pitch, the Mondotrack WS track, used as a training area for athletics in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, provided somewhere where the many athletes competing could warm up on the same surface they would find inside the stadium.
Even before the Olympics took place, the Kuriyama Corporation, Mondo's long standing partner in Japan, began looking for a new home for the Olympic warm-up track.
The area occupied by this part of the track had to be dismantled to make room for the baseball pitch which had temporarily occupied its place.
The warm-up track, after only two years in use, risked being removed and disposed of even though it was in excellent condition.
Back in February 2020, the Aichi University of Toyohashi, 350 km south-west of Tokyo, had showed interest in buying the track. However, the agreement was only finalized and signed in September 2021.
What made reuse possible was the sensible decision by the Olympic Committee to install a prefabricated surface, Mondotrack WS, not a track cast in situ so that the material could be removed and reused in a new facility.
At the end of the Olympic Games, the warm-up track already had a new official destination and it was therefore possible to plan its relocation, which took place in Spring 2022.
During the delicate dismantling phase, the promptness and professionalism of the Japanese was fundamental - they first carried out a thorough inspection of the track to ascertain its overall conditions.
After removal, the flooring was transferred to the Kuriyama Corporation warehouses to be selected: 4,000 square meters of the original Mondotrack WS surface of the warm-up track which were considered suitable for reuse were carefully cleaned and prepared ready for the new installation, while the rest was disposed of.
Due to some minor damage to the surface, the inspection took a week, but was essential in order to speed up the re-installation phase of the material at the new facility which was completed in March 2022, in just two weeks.
The University of Aichi could then finally unveil its new athletics track.
The university had a Sportflex Super X track, installed in 1994, which had become worn but, due to a tight budget, the university was unable to replace the old athletics track.
However, the Tokyo Games and the forward thinking of the organizing committee and its technical partners gave the University of Aichi a new athletics facility.
The new Mondotrack WS track has thus eliminated the risk of injury that arises from constant use of a worn track and enabled students to train and compete on the same track used by Olympic athletes whilst allowing the University to remain inside its budget.
The University of Aichi intends to open its athletics track to local primary school children and the sports community and offer the city an infrastructure that facilitates and encourages sports education at all levels, with the help of a high level track.
Handing down an Olympic legacy which surpassed professional facilities and brought the Tokyo Olympics to young athletes was possible thanks to the choice of the Organizing Committee to install a prefabricated surface in order to reduce the environmental impact of dismantling the warm-up track and restoration of the baseball pitch which had taken its place.
At the same time, assigning he track to the University of Aichi made it possible to implement a concrete project for the development and spread of sports culture.
This solution had already been adopted by other major sporting events of the past, such as the Commonwealth Games of 2018 and 2014 which demonstrated how installing prefabricated tracks for athletics could create versatile structures which are capable of complying with international standards and make a valid contribution to reducing environmental impact.