News With less than one month to go until the opening of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, the Olympic rings have been painted onto the running track of the Olympic Stadium The addition of the famous symbols forms part of the build-up to the start of the world's greatest sporting festival From 12 August to 21 August the stadium, which was opened in 2007 and renovated for Rio 2016, will host the world's greatest track-and-field athletes  It is here where Usain Bolt hopes to defend the 100m, 200m and 4x100m titles he won in 2008 and 2012 – and where Justin Gatlin will do everything he can to stop him Sebastian Coe predicts records will tumble on ‘very fast’ athletics track at Rio 2016 Olympic Games The running track at the Olympic Stadium is a deep royal blue colour So as not to distract competitors during their events, the Olympic rings have not been painted onto the track in all their multi-colour glory but in a more discreet shade of light blue   On Monday, the first members of the athletics department of the Rio 2016 organising committee will relocate to the Olympic Stadium As well as the full-time employees, 916 volunteers have received specific training in athletics and will also work at the venue In total, 2005 competitors from 205 countries are expected to participate at the stadium  The equipment that will be used in the track-and-field events has been sourced from a series of countries including Germany, Poland, Sweden, Hungry, Italy, Spain, China and India The tradition of painting the Olympic rings onto the track began at Athens 2004 and has been continued at Rio 2016 (Photo: Rio 2016/Gabriel Nascimento) Italian Alessandro Genta spent two days painting the Olympic symbols onto the track, half-way down the finishing straight Each ring required about 15 litres of paint Having completed the arduous job on Thursday (7 July), the 36-year-old will next paint the rings onto the warm-up track at the Olympic Stadium and then at other training centres across Rio Genta has been painting athletics tracks in all corners of the world for 18 years It took one week to put the design into the right place on the track and two days to paint the rings (Photo: Rio 2016/Gabriel Nascimento) The five interlocking rings were originally designed by Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic movement They represent the union of the five continents and the meeting of athletes from around the world during the Olympic Games