For the lakeside Olympic Park for the games, Rio's aim was to provide an endearing legacy for Brazil's future elite athletes. Two of the three arenas and a number of the support facilities will be developed as an Olympic Training Park, under the control of Team Brazil.

Located at the gateway to the Olympic Park, the Maria Lenk Aquatic Centre is central to this sports development plan. As well as housing administrative offices, the 40,000m² 'Olympic Training Centre' located beneath the stands of the arena will be the primary facility for training 850 athletes at the Olympic Experimental School (to be situated nearby).

Despite being designed as the exclusive training facility for Team Brazil during the games, considerable forethought went into how the Olympic Training Centre would be used afterwards. The equipment and materials chosen for the project were carefully researched to find the best quality and variety available, to ensure the building would continue to be a relevant part of the Brazilian sports infrastructure.

It's often said that designers spend an inordinate amount of time on walls and ceilings, when in fact the floors are the most dominant part of the building. In choosing Neoflex High Performance Fitness Flooring, Rio got it right.

To the uninitiated, this looks and feels like any gym floor, but Neoflex Fitness Flooring offers a number of advantages, including:

• It's developed especially for use in fitness and free-weight areas, to absorb impact and mitigate both the sounds and vibrations.
• The anti-fatigue properties of the flooring leave athletes fresher and free from injury, and it carries a seven year warranty against breaking or cracking.

But arguably the greatest advantage of Neoflex Fitness Flooring is its design flexibility. The floor was decorated with functional training marks as a reference for athletes when they exercise. It was custom fabricated in a factory-controlled environment to the precise specifications of the architects, delivered complete with a mounting map, and laid in just three days.

Having got the flooring right, there was little else required to complete the building other than rolling in the equipment. There's no question that they've created a functional and future-proofed facility for the next several generations of Olympic Athletes.