Gymnastics World Championships

From October 4th-13th 2019, everything revolved around the topic of gymnastics in Stuttgart. The Hanns-Martin-Schleyer hall, offering 8,500 seats, hosted this year's world championship in apparatus gymnastics and around 600 athletes from 93 delegations battled for the world championship title.

PRG was present with a 40-man crew which was responsible for rigging, video, lighting and audio technology. In order to allow the client to visualize the design and the technical implementation during the planning phase, the PRG Creative Team designed a spatial concept and various visualisations. A considerable advantage, since the team involved could imagine the chosen event location including the technology, the stage and the spatial dimensions.

With the competitions being broadcasted on TV and the Internet, it was important to optimize the lighting kit for the illumination of the gymnastics fields for the camera images. It’s all about finding the right balance and not dazzling the athletes with the lighting fixtures, which represented 1,200 lux on the field. MAC Viper Wash DX luminaires and GLP Impression X4 L were installed.

The PRG Special Constructions team customized a 25m wide x 9m high LED wall, with ROE MC-7H modules, for the stage on which the award ceremonies and athletes entrances took place. Special aspect of that wall being it being curved for the public to have the perfect view from all angles. PRG was also responsible for the installation of the advertising banners, for which Absen LED T5 modules were used. For the customer it was important to give these gymnastics championships a more modern touch. The flags of the winning countries this year were displayed on three suspended LED screens.

For this type of top-class sporting event, high-quality audio technology is highly important in addition to lighting and video technology in order to provide the public with the latest information in the best possible way. Meyer Sound MINA loudspeakers were in action for the sound in the audience ranks. The gymnasiums themselves were equipped with Meyer Sound UPA-1P.

In just six days, the crew installed the 162 tons of event technology. Around 180 hoists and 8t of cables set-up in the hall for the lighting installation. For Alexander Fleige, Project Manager of the Gymnastics World Championships, an event of this size can only be realised with a great deal of know-how and teamwork:

"With PRG, we hoped to find a competent partner in the areas of production and technology - and we were absolutely satisfied and really enjoyed the cooperation. You can really call this teamwork! Luckily PRG was there from the very first minute and thus accompanied the whole installation in the hall and took care of the complete technical equipment from the very beginning. It really helped us to shape the image of this World Cup".