Olympic Park Stadium is a former athletics track that served as the main athletics venue in Melbourne from 1951 to 2011.
The stadium was located on the current site of Olympic Park Oval and also hosted soccer and rugby league matches.
The venue was one of the first cinders athletics tracks in Australia, after the Poplar Road Athletics Track in Parkville (1936) and ES Marks Athletics Field in Sydney (1949). The track held its first meet on 27 January 1951 and served as a warm up track to the 1956 Olympic Games, which were held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
A famous moment of sportsmanship occurred at the venue during the Mile at the 1956 Australian Championships, where John Landy stopped to help the fallen Ron Clarke, before taking flight over the final lap to still claim victory. The gesture is immortalised in a bronze statue that remains located at Olympic Park Oval.
The venue was resurfaced to rubberised bitumen in 1973 and then to a modern synthetic surface (chevron) in March 1974. The final track surface was Mondo.
Olympic Park Stadium hosted more editions of the Australian Championships than any other Australian venue, hosting the event on 14 occasions: 1952 (women only), 1956 (men only), 1957 (men only), 1964, 1969 (men only), 1974 (men only), 1976, 1983, 1984, 1990, 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2011. The venue also hosted a number of high profile one-day meets, including meets part of the IAAF Grand Prix Series. The 2001 IAAF Grand Prix Final was hosted at the venue, the only time the event was ever staged in the southern hemisphere.
The final meet held at the venue was the 2011 Australian Championships.
Athletics Victoria’s offices were located in the main grandstand.
The track was demolished in 2011 to make way for Olympic Park Oval, which is primarily used as a training venue by AFL team, Collingwood Football Club.
