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Blackout was honoured to be part of the inaugural Athletics World Cup at The London Stadium which took place on 14th and 15th July. Eight top performing athletics nations competed in the floodlit arena in an endeavour to secure the prestigious Platinum Athletics World Cup Trophy – the first of its kind and most valuable sporting trophy ever made. Over the course of two evenings , the competition featured track events from the 100m through to the 1500m, plus relays and eight field events. Great Britain did share a substantial portion of the $2m prize pot by finishing in 3rd place, however, the USA team triumphed becoming the first trophy holders.

Blackout, alongside True Staging were tasked by Kenny Underwood of Cheeky Rascal Productions to provide an integrated truss and stage solution for static LED screens in a section of the stadium. Drawing upon previous knowledge and experience from working at the venue, Kevin Monks and his team assembled an 12 legged Prolyte H40V truss structure to accommodate an internal and external Athletes entrance screen supplied by Creative Technology, with space for True Staging’s staircase and an ALI-DECK platform. Genie AL25 Superlifts were key for the build of the structure, with CM Prostar Hoists then used to lift the 2 LED screens. Blackout’s 6 person strong team worked determinedly to produce a robust and tailored structure for the event.

“Working with Blackout from the formation of the company made it a simple choice for me, feeling safe in the knowledge that they would work in synergy with CT both in pre production and delivery, working with Kevin and Matt Hartfree is always a pleasure and it takes any stress out of producing the client vision” said Kenny Underwood.

As Kevin Monks has commented “After being involved in the series of successful Athletics events in The London Stadium last summer, it was such a pleasure to be involved in this new exciting event, bringing the excitement of a World Cup into athletics.”

The structure is due to stay in for this weekend’s Müller Anniversary games, one of the world’s biggest non-championship athletics meetings of the season. This significant IAAF Diamond league gathering has previously attracted esteemed athletes such as Usain Bolt and Mo Farah. It has definitely been an eventful 2 weeks for Blackout, who look forward to supplying future rigging packages for The London Stadium and other sporting occasions.

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