OSRAM and A&O Technology illuminate Alpine Skiing World Championships

A breathtaking spectacle awaits the athletes and hundred thousand plus visitors expected in Garmisch-Partenkirchen for the World Skiing Championships in February: during the opening ceremony in the Olympic Stadium and each evening's medal presentation ceremonies, in the course of a lavish lightshow visible way beyond the limits of the Garmisch-Partenkirchen district, a bridge will be fashioned in the night sky linking the three main competition venues: the Olympic Stadium, Kandahar and Medal Plaza. The effect will be achieved through the deployment at each of the three venues of high-powered searchlights the beams of which will intersect at a point in the night sky equidistant from all three. With blue beams emanating from the Olympic Stadium, red from the Kandahar downhill run and burnished gold from Medal Plaza, the bridge will be resplendent in the colours of the FIS (Fédération Internationale de Ski), which is organizing the event.

"With the world championships this year being held in our own country, we feel it is incumbent upon us as a company with a rich tradition to ensure through the use of state-of-the-art lighting technology that the event will be an unforgettable experience," explains Wolfgang Gregor, Osram's Director of Customer Relationship Management. "Furthermore, through a project in the Galapagos Islands, we are rendering the overall production carbon neutral."

For the light show on opening night, a total of thirty-eight FALCON high-powered searchlights of the kind often seen at major concerts and outdoor events are being deployed. They are equipped with OSRAM XBO 7 KW lamps. Thanks to the extremely high luminance and excellent colour reproduction of these high-intensity discharge lamps, the illumination of the night sky over Garmisch-Partenkirchen should be nothing if not impressive. A further 4,500 coloured OSRAM high-powered LEDs in the Olympic Stadium and Medal Plaza will contribute additional colour and dazzling effects to the opening ceremony and medal presentations.

As was the case with the illumination recently of the 60-foot-high bronze statue of the Goddess of Bavaria during the 200th Oktoberfest in Munich, the technical realization of the light show is the responsibility of A&O Technology. To create the bridge of light, which will be visible nightly from 5pm to 10pm in the sky over Garmisch-Partenkirchen, over sixty FALCON xenon searchlights will be used. Eighteen FALCON 6000 CMY units will be positioned in the upper tier of the Olympic Stadium, whilst three FALCON BEAM 7000W and eight FALCON FLOWER 3000W units will be placed on the ski jump, the landing area of which will be converted through the use of video projectors into a giant canvas. At the take-off point, the beams of ten FALCON BEAM 7000W units will compose the pier of the Olympic Stadium span of the bridge at Gudiberg. At Medal Plaza in World Championship Park, three FALCON BEAM 7000W and twelve FALCON BEAM 3000W units will form a second pier. The third pier will be sculpted by nine FALCON BEAM 7000W searchlights in the Kandahar Arena. The opening show will pay tribute to the contributions to world culture of local figures such as composer Richard Strauss and children's author Michael Ende, by drawing upon themes from works such as the Rosenkavalier and Momo.

The construction each evening of the bridge of light will begin with the creation of a 4-minute frozen image: a white pyramid of light. Only then will the orientation of the beams slowly change to compose a bridge in the sky in the colours of the FIS, with the colour blue assigned to the Olympic Stadium, red to the Kandahar Arena and burnished gold to Medal Plaza. This constellation, too, however, will prove transitory as the beams revert to their original configuration and the pyramid of white light reappears. This sequential networking of the competition venues will break off at 10 pm nightly throughout the World Skiing Championships 2011 to resume from the start the next evening at 5 pm.

About A&O Lighting Technology GmbH

A&O Lighting Technology GmbH, which was founded by Marco Niedermeier, has been actively engaged in the hiring and sale of show and architectural lighting equipment since 1995. A&O's diverse inventory includes special LED equipment and several hundred searchlights (high-power xenon floodlights) that can be used for well-known entertainment- and architectural lighting applications. It also has the exclusive worldwide distribution rights to a variety of architectural luminaries and searchlights, such as the FALCON® range from alpha one. A&O Lighting Technology, with its head office in Germany, is active worldwide with subsidiaries and offices in UAE, USA and UK.

A&O Lighting Technology