The tournament was held at the Elfstedenhal sports complex in Leeuwarden (photo: Henk Jan Dijks)
The Netherlands - The Olympic Qualification Tournament in curling took place in the Netherlands in December and the ice has never looked better thanks to MHB AV and Elation’s tunable Kl Panel LED soft lights. Held at the Elfstedenhal sports complex in the town of Leeuwarden, a professionally illuminated surface of the highest standard was a must for the Olympic qualifying event.
The Olympic Qualification Tournament was the first international curling tournament to be hosted by the Netherlands. Teams from across the world competed in the two-week event in the hopes of advancing to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, which starts on 4 February.
Months prior to the event, MHB AV had contacted Bert Schmeits, key account manager Benelux at Elation, and as a result invested in the full-colour-spectrum and colour temperature-adjustable KL light panels. Schmeits reports that the company was so enthusiastic with the high-quality illumination and enormous output that they immediately saw the soft light as the right candidate to illuminate the curling event.
MHB AV has plenty of experience designing and suppling audiovisual solutions for sporting events, having worked with clients such as Triple Double sports marketing and EMG media group. For the Olympic Qualification Tournament in curling, MHB delivered a complete lighting, audio, video and rigging package.
“We needed a bright, high CRI lighting setup that we could place above the curling lanes in order to deliver at least 1400 lux onto the ice so that the curling players and television cameras had a perfect light without shadows,” states Marten Hylkema of MHB AV. “We chose to use 90 units of the KL Panel because of its good light output, high CRI and perfect color tuning.” The KL Panel units were mounted in rows approximately 7m above the ice.
Besides the benefits of an LED system like lower power draw and greater reliability, the luminaires produced less heat in the arena, meaning the cooling system for the ice did not have to work so hard.

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