2009 Slalom European Canoeing Championships

Over 25 nations and nearly 3000 spectators converged on Nottingham at the end of May this year for the first major international canoe slalom competition since the Beijing Olympics.

With the best canoeists in the world competing for medals, the Slalom European Championships is the first major competition in the UK since the World Championships in 1995. Nottingham’s National Water Sports Centre has recently benefited from a £700,000 upgrade making it the best white water course in the country and providing competitors with a most challenging course.

Working with Great Big Events who produced the event, Creative Technology, incorporating Dimension Audio, supplied both audio and visual solutions for the competition. A 40m2 truck mounted Mitsubushi OD10 screen, video playback from Grass Valley Turbos, DVD Players and an RF camera system were supplied by CT in addition to fibre signal distribution across the course both for technical camera feeds and relay to Audio Control. The course at 300 metres long meant that the RF camera system had to have a powerful transmitter that covered the entire canoeing course.

For Rob Day, Creative Technology’s Project Manager, supplying a screen that was big enough and quickly installed was just one of the challenges overcome by CT. “Some of the access points around the site were extremely tight. We also had to have the weight loading of a bridge on the grounds of the course checked against the axle weights of the mobile screen! In addition to that, because the course is so long, we had to consider a suitable video solution to manage feeds from technical monitoring cameras along the course, feeding monitors at the audio control area and to provide a suitable RF Camera solution that was high powered enough to cover the area.”

Staf Rowley, Dimension Audio’s Project Manager also had to consider the length of the course for the audio requirements. Providing distributing system d&b E9’s for crowd coverage and high powered Sennheiser radio microphones to ensure continuity of contact throughout the course, Dimension also split all the feeds to OB trucks around the course.

With a stream of medal success creating a celebratory feel amongst both athletes and supporters and Great Britain winning four medals, the 2009 European Slalom Championships certainly gave competitors a good opportunity to gain experience of a major international canoeing event in preparation for London 2012.