The Paris Olympics track is purple. Thank France’s lavender fields.
The Peninsula
Years from now, when photos and videos of a purple track are reshared online, Camille Yvinec hopes people will immediately think of the Paris Olympics...
Years from now, when photos and videos of a purple track are reshared online, Camille Yvinec hopes people will immediately think of the Paris Olympics.
Yvinec, the associate director of brand identity for the Summer Games, eschewed the typical brick red track for lavender lanes and dark violet service areas. She and other organizers decided to create the first purple track in the Olympics, a venue runners have expressed excitement to compete on when track-and-field events start Thursday.
"We tried to really make something iconic,” Yvinec said.
The Washington Post spoke with Yvinec, the track’s manufacturer and material experts about how the eye-catching venue at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, France, came together.Why is the track purple? - Organizers wanted to build an Olympic track like none that had ever been seen, Yvinec said. For decades, the event’s tracks have been red- a color that shields rubber from the damaging effects of ultraviolet rays from the sun- including at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
The Olympic staff in Paris narrowed the color choice to three early last year: blue, green and purple. Each shade represented a landmark of France. Green is the color of the roof of the Palais Garnier, an opera house in Paris. Blue is the signature color of ceramics made by a popular French porcelain manufacturer, the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres. Purple represents the thousands of acres of lavender fields in the South of France.
