UCI Track Champions League 2022
The UCI Track Champions League is a brand-new racing series, originally debuting in the 2021-22 season.
A partnership between Discovery Sports Events, UCI and British Cycling is a racing competition that reimagines what track cycling can be; track cycle racing where the stakes are higher, where only the ‘best-of-the-best’ qualify to take part and riders are ultimately turned into stars.
With simple, short format racing across multiple international rounds and broadcast partnerships reaching millions, the league aims to make track cycling more accessible, and more exciting than ever before.
Starting in November the event calendar encompassed venues in Mallorca, Berlin, and Paris with the final held at the Lee Valley VeloPark in London on Friday 2nd and Saturday 3rd of December. For the second year running, Midas provided all power generation and electrical distribution solutions for both the live broadcast element as well as show lighting for the London event.
Although the Lee Valley VeloPark was originally built for the 2012 Olympic Games, no-one could have possibly foreseen the evolution of cycling and the subsequent technical demands of this type of event ten years ago.
Fast forward to present day, the show lighting and projection was provided from eight lighting trusses situated around the very top of the venue, complimented by a central truss flown above the track all powered from a sync pair of 250kVA generators located on a bespoke pad to the rear of the venue. Many 100s of metres of electrical cabling was threaded through the building’s infrastructure via plant rooms and internal risers. This challenging but crucial process, which at the time felt like a subterranean three-dimensional weaving endurance test, was designed to maximise occupant safety without loss of any power distribution practicalities.
Complementing the high-level show lighting, the track itself was surrounded with LED track boards, with the track centre itself split between corporate, athletes warm-up area and a TV studio, as well as further show lighting.
Sitting alongside the primary show generators, a pair of 150kVAs generators looked after all electrical power aspects of the live broadcast, including the broadcast compound, numerous camera positions around the venue as well as the spider cam. In addition, the Midas generators powered the TV studio / interview area in the track centre.
A team of eight technicians from Midas started the complex build in London on Saturday 26th November, the same day the tour was in Paris. They worked closely with the VeloPark team installing the various cable runs prior to the tours arrival from France on Wednesday evening.
All in all this was a challenging event with tight, rigid and immovable deadlines, but was delivered seamlessly and was a great way to round up another exciting year for Midas!
