Before kick-off could commence, eyes turned to the World Cup Opening Ceremony in Qatar. Before the pitch was laid, the Stage One crew arrived in the Middle East to begin assembling and installing the cable net. The five primary catenary lines formed the foundation, providing the structural support for the fly line rigging, and was securely attached to the stadium super structure. In addition, the team attached cable reelers to the catenary, which provided power and data to the flown pieces. 

During the ceremony, Qmotion was responsible for manoeuvring two steel bridges, an LED screen, a 24m lighting truss, along with nation mascots and the inflatable Qatar World Cup emblem, to enhance the performance. Two pairs of 30kW winches worked in tandem to fly the bridges, while the rest descended and ascended on cue, using 22kW winches. 

As always, safety and event reassurance for the client was a top priority. To ensure smooth running of the event, there were primary and backup control desks sited locally at the winch farm; the team used a redundant fibre optic link connecting front of house to the motion servers. A discrete and parallel safe network connected the drives’ on-board safety monitoring to strategically positioned emergency stop buttons.

Once the champions were crowned, the de-rig process began.