Today, as the Olympic high jump, hammer throw and heptathlon competitions begin, a new, never-used, spike-resistant, brick-red Olympic track is good to go. Scoring officials' tables? Completed. Twenty-two rows of sculptured blue polyethylene stadium seats? Waiting to be filled. And banks of 2,000-watt floodlights are ready to illuminate sprinters as they explode off the blocks at night.
No, not at the world-renowned 72,000-seat Athens Olympic Stadium, but on that new running track at Randalls Island that, for months now, has been so intriguing to motorists across the East River on the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive.
The $45 million, 4,754-seat Icahn Stadium, named after its principal private donor, the investor Carl Icahn, is now 85 percent built. And the already completed $1 million running surface is essentially the same as the one in the great stadium in Greece. It was installed directly after the Athens track by the Mondo company of Alba, Italy, the premier Olympic surfacer.
''Randalls will definitely be a fast track,'' said Luca Reinaudo, the company's construction director. A good thing, because after the stadium itself is completed in November, its creators hope it will be a future site for Olympic trials in track and field, after its expected Class 1 certification by the International Association of Athletics Federations in Geneva.
The city's parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, said that to many track mavens, the completion of the stadium ''will be a watershed moment for the reinvigoration of track and field in New York City.''
Continue reading the main story''I think it will inspire a whole generation of runners, just to know that they can compete on the same track as Olympic runners,'' he added. ''Symbolically, it says that city athletes deserve a world-class facility, instead of a disgusting falling-apart track with crummy portable bathrooms and no place to change in.''
The commissioner was referring to the old runners' refuge on Randalls Island, the unlamented Downing Stadium -- torn down in 2002 -- where he once ran as a sprinter in his student days at Horace Mann.
Originally called the Municipal Stadium in 1936, it was renamed in honor of John J. Downing, a Parks Department director of recreation, in 1955.
Completed under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration, the 22,000-seat stadium was ready just in time for the American Olympic trials on July 11, 1936, presided over by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Robert Moses. (Jesse Owens won the 100-yard dash there and went on to compete in the Berlin Olympics.) And the Women's Olympic Team Trials were held there in 1964.
While the stadium showcased other events -- from Duke Ellington concerts in the 1930's to the New York Cosmos soccer team and its star Pelé in the 1970's -- sentimental New Yorkers recall their ''Chariots of Fire'' relationship with the old cinder-track stadium, where generations of children were cheered by their parents during more than a half-century of competitions.
The increasingly decrepit stadium fell into dire disrepair during the fiscal crisis in the 1970's, when drug addicts stole the copper piping and anything that wasn't nailed down, Mr. Benepe said. Despite a 1980's renovation, he said, the track surface was ''in dismal shape'' toward the end.
Karen Cohen, the founder and president of the 12-year-old Randalls Island Sports Foundation, a public-private partnership with the Parks Department that is modeled on the Central Park Conservancy, said that, in recent years, ''New York hasn't had nearly the prominence in track and field that it should have, given the size of our city.''
The foundation built the new stadium within the footprint of the former one as part of its mission to develop the island's recreational facilities and maintain its 480-acre city park.
Aimee Boden, the executive director of the foundation, promised that the new stadium ''will be held sacred for track and field.'' A master plan calls for the construction of a separate performing-arts amphitheater, as well as a new soccer field, a $120-million water park and a new tennis center with a bleacher stadium and 20 new courts.
The track stadium is already paid for, including $22.6 million in city money; the rest of the $45 million was raised by the foundation from private sources. Mr. Icahn's $10 million donation permitted the construction and installation of the stadium's two cable-supported, 170-foot light towers, which will provide the illumination for evening meets and also support the stadium's roof.
The drainage and the asphalt-and-gravel subsurface preparation of the track cost $2 million; its high-tolerance installation, verified by on-site measurement, does not deviate from level more than an eighth of an inch over 10 feet of track.
Cutting-edge competitive requirements drove the efforts of the stadium's designer, Hillier Group Architecture in Manhattan. The laws of physics dictate that runners go faster on tracks that are more circular, rather than elongated hippodrome-like tracks, where runners lose momentum in tight turns. The new track's large radius -- 120 feet -- was designed to permit runners to make wide, fast turns.
''Wait till we begin piling up some record-breaking performances in the stadium,'' said Dr. Norbert W. Sander, an internist who is president of the Armory Foundation, which runs the New Balance Track and Field Center at 168th Street and Fort Washington Avenue in Manhattan.
The armory was renovated and given its own state-of-the-art indoor Mondo track after Dr. Sander mounted a $25 million effort to refurbish it, turning it into the busiest track-and-field facility in the country, with 120 meets a year. The Armory Foundation staff will oversee the Randalls track-and-field program schedules and coordinate seasons between the indoor and outdoor tracks.
At Icahn Stadium, there are lockers, training rooms and shower facilities for up to 1,000 visiting athletes; also available are first aid and treatment rooms, a lecture hall, equipment-storage facilities and even a ''doping suite,'' or drug-testing room.
But the lighting may prove to be revolutionary. Dr. Sander said that the city's torrid summer days meant that the outdoor track's season was limited. The lights, he said, ''will be perfect for track meets at night, and will enable us to host international track meets as well.''
Indeed, the Sports Foundation and Dr. Sander are now going after major track meets, including the N.C.A.A. regional championships and the 2008 Olympic trials.
While the running track itself will be preserved for competition and not open to the public, Mr. Icahn hopes that schools -- public, private and parochial -- will make constant use of the facility. ''The city doesn't do enough to help our kids -- the poor ones especially -- get away from the television set,'' Mr. Icahn said. ''Every kid deserves the right to exercise and to compete.''
Since construction began in January 2003, more than 1,000 laborers from different trades have worked on the stadium. Hard hats have been putting the finishing touches on interiors, and have prepared the grass infield that will be used for the shot-put, pole vault, high jump, discus and javelin. ''The I.A.A.F. won't approve artificial turf,'' said Rebecca Darr, the stadium's construction manager for the city's Economic Development Corporation.
For the workers, achieving the Olympic-level tolerances has been a challenge. ''There has been nothing average about this job,'' said Vinnie Perrone, a carpenter who was been on the site for four months.
Is he worried about the judgment of future Olympians? ''Bring 'em on,'' he said.
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