LONDON OLYMPICS 2012:THE hi-tech track on which Olympic medals will be won next summer was launched yesterday with a promise that it will provide both sprinters and long-distance runners with their best chance of breaking records.

Sebastian Coe, the London 2012 chairman, who had spent the morning addressing inspectors from the International Association of Athletics Federations in a bid to secure the 2017 World Athletics Championships for the €567 million Olympic Stadium, said the unveiling of the red track marked a “huge milestone”.

With the sun streaming down on the stadium, which remains the subject of a bitter legal battle over its use after the Games, British competitors including 1,500 metres world silver medallist Hannah England and Paralympic gold medallist Dan Greaves were the first athletes to set foot on the track.

Coe, who also tested the surface, said it felt “lovely” and reminded him of the track in Zurich, where he once broke the 1,500 metres world record.

The surface, manufactured by Italian company Mondo, took 75 days to install. The company’s project manager, Joe Hoekstra, said the vulcanised rubber had been brought from Italy in 15 metre rolls and “laid out like a jigsaw puzzle to make sure the joints are invisible”. He said it had been designed to give “maximum energy return for the athlete”.

Hoekstra said that the surface had been designed to be both soft and springy for long-distance runners as well as providing enough impact for sprinters. “The material is laid in the direction of the runners and that is specifically for the sprinters.”

Mondo is also responsible for laying a 400 metres warm-up track outside the stadium and an 80 metres sprinting warm-up track beneath the undercroft of one of the main stands. “Since the other Olympic tracks we have done we have tried to make it softer and faster. Long-distance runners and those who didn’t break world records were always complaining that Mondo was hard. We’ve really tried to address that concern. We are very confident we will see some excellent performances,” said Hoekstra.

James Bulley, the director of venues and infrastructure for the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Locog), said organisers had flirted with various different colour schemes for the track, including blue and black, but had decided to stick with the traditional red because it worked best for broadcasters and tied in with the stadium’s colour scheme.

The stadium will be reconfigured after the Games, with West Ham and Newham Council proposing to spend £95m converting the 80,000-seat athletics stadium into a 60,000 capacity venue capable of hosting a range of sports. The unveiling was timed to coincide with a two-day inspection visit from the IAAF.

Coe, British sports minister Hugh Robertson, London Mayor Boris Johnson, UK Athletics chairman Ed Warner and Olympic Park Legacy Company chair Baroness Ford spent the morning attempting to lay the issue of the stadium’s future to rest.

Tottenham Hotspur and Leyton Orient are challenging the process by which it was awarded to West Ham and Newham, with a judicial review scheduled for October 18th. Spurs had wanted to remove the athletics track, while West Ham and Newham vowed to keep it.

But Robertson, who delivered a legal letter from the Treasury’s solicitors promising that the track would stay in the stadium, said there was no question mark over its future as an athletics venue.

"Even if Tottenham were to win, and we don't think they will, we'll simply re-start the process again and the athletics track will be a non-negotiable part of it. Having seen this here today, I don't think anyone wants to see this stadium without a running track in it." GuardianService

SPYING ON CHEATS: Tip-offs to help drug testers

INTELLIGENCE gathered from everyone from cleaning staff to customs officials will help authorities to target drug testing at the athletes, sports and nations most likely to cheat at the London 2012 Olympic Games, anti-doping experts said yesterday.

Jonathan Harris, the London Games' anti-doping medical services manager, said the number of tests carried out would be record breaking – some 5,000 tests among 10,500 athletes – and said targeting the tests at the right people and sports would be vital to ensuring a drug-free games.

"It's not about the weight of the tests, but it's about using those tests more effectively than before," he told an anti-doping conference in London.

Harris, who was speaking alongside Andy Parkinson of UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) and David Cowan, head of the Drug Control Centre at King's College London, who will head the drug-testing laboratory during London 2102, said officials would have a daily "breakfast meeting" during the Games to share intelligence and decide where to focus efforts.

"What we're trying to do is work with sources of information in order to provide an intelligent testing programme," Harris said. "That's the key.

"There will be intelligence sources from everything from security and cleaning (staff) . . . to personnel working in functional areas during the Games to ensure if they should come across behaviours that are untoward, they should share that information with us.

"We're looking at faster analysis, higher sensitivity and stronger proof when it comes to drug testing," he added.

Parkinson said UK Anti-Doping, which has a team working with police, customs and border control officials, would also be feeding into the daily strategy meetings.