If you happen to’ve been tuning in to occasions just like the pole vault, steeplechase, or 100-meter sprint on the Paris Video games, you may’ve observed one thing somewhat…totally different in regards to the Olympic observe. And, no, your TV’s show isn’t glitching: The floor actually is purple.

Effectively, to be particular, two totally different shades of purple: Organizers selected a fragile lavender for the portion that athletes compete on, and a deeper violet for the technical areas. (Plus a pleasant complementary grey as an accent colour, to recall to mind the asphalt observe used the final time Paris hosted the Video games, manner again in 1924.)

As for why the observe is purple (somewhat than the everyday crimson and even blue)? It primarily comes all the way down to aesthetics: Organizers wished the Paris observe to face out. In truth, the observe is the primary of its colour to see competitors, as Olympics.com stories. Revealed a couple of months earlier than the Olympics, the hue was chosen by Paris Video games officers based on the necessities of World Athletics and Olympic Broadcasting Companies (OBS), the company that produces protection of the Olympic and Paralympic Video games, and the Italian agency Mondo was commissioned to do the development.

One different issue performed a task within the choice as properly: The viewing expertise. The purple observe merely lends itself higher to the display, providing higher distinction as a way to catch each little bit of the motion, based on Olympics.com.

TOPSHOT – Athletes compete within the girls’s 1500m warmth of the athletics occasion on the Paris 2024 Olympic Video games at Stade de France in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, on August 6, 2024. (Photograph by Antonin THUILLIER / AFP) (Photograph by ANTONIN THUILLIER/AFP through Getty Pictures)ANTONIN THUILLIER/Getty Pictures

“We needed to work exhausting on the colours, in order that the shades would work greatest to spotlight the athletes. It’s a observe, it needs to be fairly, however above all it’s a stage on which the athletes are going to carry out. What’s crucial is that the colours and the athletes stand out,” Alain Blondel, athletics and para-athletics supervisor for Paris 2024, advised Olympics.com in April.

And it is perhaps wishful pondering, however we’d wish to imagine there’s one different clarification as properly—a symbolic one. In spite of everything, purple is a colour historically related to kings and queens—and what are Olympic athletes however athletic royalty?

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