The blue track at the Kamen Kaiserau Sports Centre in continuous operation for professionals

Let us go back to the year 2009: the 12th World Athletics Championships are taking place in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, and international athletes are looking for a suitable venue for their preparations in Germany. The entire Canadian track and field athletics team is also on the lookout, and finally decides on the Kamen Kaiserau Sports Centre. A good choice! The Sports Centre offers optimal training conditions – not least thanks to the Polytan running track, which was newly installed shortly before the championships started. What’s more, it’s blue, just like the one in the Berlin stadium. Bosses at the Kamen Kaiserau Sports Centre opted for the Polytan M competition-standard surface as part of extensive renovation work. The 13 mm-thick surface was laid over an area of approximately 4,500 m². Polytan had already installed a synthetic pitch in the Sports Centre in 2004, followed in 2008 by a second field made with the premium product LigaTurf RS+ 240. Anyway, back to the Canadian athletes. Through sweat and hard graft they turned in a successful performance at the world championships and deemed the Kamen Kaiserau Sports Centre to be good. Very good, in fact, because the facility has since become the “European base” for “Athletics Canada”. But what does this actually mean?

Following talks between the FLVW and Athletics Canada, a longer-term partnership agreement was made until the end of 2012, with the option to extend until 2013 to prepare for the World Athletics Championships in Moscow. Canadian athletes regularly use the Polytan track in Kaiserau as a permanent European training track for international competitions within Europe.