Italy has been one of the worst hit countries in the world during the coronavirus pandemic and that has inevitably had an impact on its country’s top athletes.
For the past two months, Italian athletes – along with the rest of the nation – have been subject to their government’s strict guidelines about staying at home and have had to train at home. Although national standard athletes will be able to start using training facilities under stringent conditions, many athletes will still be training regularly at home for many weeks to come.
To help get some of the top Italian athletes back on track, even though it could be many months before they can actually compete, European Athletics Green Inspiration Partner Mondo has linked up with several of them and provided them with some of their product.
Ayomide Folorunso, the 2017 European U23 400m hurdles champion, reigning Italian high jump number one Elena Vallortigara and the Italian 400m record holder Davide Re, the fastest European over one lap of the track last year, were among the athletes to get a lifeline as soon as the Mondo factory in Gallo d’Alba was allowed to reopen on 14 April after being shut for several weeks due to the corona virus crisis.
“Each athlete received a customised order according to their space at home; whether it was indoors, or they had some type of courtyard. As we have a prefabricated product we had the possibility to unfurl the longer rolls in our warehouse, then cut them into five-metre pieces, roll them up again and then pack and deliver them to the athlete,” commented a Mondo spokesperson, explaining the process.
“The product we sent the athletes is Sportflex SX, which is 13.5 mm thick, it’s a professional product – and it’s the product from which our Sportflex Super X 720 evolved – but it’s slightly more suitable for training, and it has been particularly popular in the USA.
“Once the athletes receive out product, they just unroll it and it will stay down on the floor without any further installation as it pretty heavy.”European Athletics and Mondo will be tracking these, and several other, Italian athletes progress during the rest of the year to see how they have responded to having had to train at home during the coronavirus and what impact getting their very own consignment of Mondo product has had.