Rome Olympic Stadium – BASF Conica not Mondo

Remember those BASF commercials a few years back?

They would show all the synthetic goods that were produced by BASF?

Their slogan goes like this:

We don’t make a lot of products you buy,
We don’t make a lot of products you buy BETTER.

If you are an audiophile like me, you think immediately of TDK or BASF.  How many of you bought metal cassette tapes in your lifetime?

One of the surprises I had was thinking the track at Rome was Mondo, as Mondo is extremely popular for lightening fast times.  You can read my previous article on Mondo.

But I was wrong.  On careful examination (I did manage to sneak onto the track early in the program without getting kicked out) it was not Mondo but Conica BASF.  In fact, Berlin, Lausanne, Stockholm, and Zurich all have Conica.

Here is their product guide(PDF file).  Check out page 4 to see the different products.

Page 5 lists all their premier sites.

Tokyo 1991 WC, Atlanta 1996 OG, and Beijing 2008 OG all had super hard Mondo surfaces, and we all know those venues produced World Records in the sprints and Jumps.

In Atlanta, I read a few expletive discussions on how distance runners finished races with horrendous blisters.

Right now, I am currently in Rome where the average daytime high is over 30C or 90F, but I remember the days clearly when I begged for a covered 60 meter straightaway with a rolled Mondo surface on those cold wet mornings in Vancouver.