With the Italian government announcement on Saturday that travel restrictions from 3 June will be eased, allowing travel between regions in Italy and some international travel, European Athletics Green Inspiration Partner Mondo is looking forward to getting back to business.
'Fortunately, we had already installed all the Tokyo tracks before the emergency (of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic),” explained Mondo Vice President Federico Stroppiana, looking ahead to the Olympic Games which will now take place in the summer of 2021, which marks the 12th consecutive edition that the Italian company has been on official supplier to the world’s biggest sports event.
“We still have to supply equipment and perform other associated work, but we will talk about that next year. The priority now is to restart supplying the orders and progressing with the installations especially in Europe, where everything has been stuck for three months,” he added.
The dire situation relating to the coronavirus pandemic in Italy meant that Mondo’s factory in the picturesque Piedmontese town of Gallo D’Alba was closed for more than two weeks at the end of March and during the first half of April, an unprecedented situation for the company.
“The summer season (for athletics) has been severely compromised but we are looking at a recovery and a relaunch ahead of Christmas,' added Stroppiana optimistically, whose company has seen more than 260 world records and bests on their tracks since the first one almost five deacdes ago, when an Italian quartet anchored by sprint icon Pietro Mennea set a 4x200m world record of 1:21.5 on the newly opened track in Barletta.
Among those indicators of better times ahead. especially in Europe, is the revised international calendar for the major one-day meetings – the Diamond League and Continental Tour Gold meetings – published by the global governing body of the sport World Athletics on Tuesday.
International athletics season announced for August to October 2020.
— World Athletics (@WorldAthletics) May 12, 2020
The first seven of this year’s reduced and revised schedule of 11 Diamond League meetings will take place in Europe and five out of the six Continental Tour Gold meetings will also take place in Europe, meaning that the Old Continent will once again be the focus of attention for the sport during the summer months despite the unavoidable cancellation of the Paris 2020 European Athletics Championships.
The series of 17 meetings gets underway in Turku, Finland on 11 August with a Continental Tour Gold meeting in the history 13,000 capacity Paavo Nurmi Stadium, which has seen no less than 20 world records and is able to boast of a Mondotrack surface.
Given the eagerness of the world's top athletes to show off their prowess after being in enforced hibernation for many months, who is to say there will not be further superlatives in just under three months time.