Czech Republic won its fourth Fed Cup women’s tennis title in five years in the 2015
final staged at Prague’s O2 Arena in front of a capacity 14,500 audience who
enjoyed a nail-biting weekend of superlative tennis with their team playing a really
strong Russian contingent … and Robe was one of six very proud sponsors.

Robe moving lights were also used for the high energy Opening Ceremony (OC)
spectacular show designed by Milan “Mejla’ Froňek from Lightneq, which prepared
everyone for plenty of on-court excitement to follow. The installation and technical
support was co-ordinated by Prague-based AV Media.

Milan has created high impact lighting schemes for numerous other top sporting
events including the World Ice Hockey Championships held in the Czech Republic in
May, the Sochi Olympic Park installation at Letna Park, Prague, during the 2014
Sochi Winter Olympics and for the award-winning Czech House during the 2012
London Olympics.

For the FED Cup final, Milan had some of Robe’s newest fixtures at his fingertips
including 26 x BMFLs – 12 Blades and 14 Spots; 16 x LEDBeam 1000s; 12 x Pointes;
10 of the brand new LED Strobes; five Squares – making their live debut; 4 x
CitySkape Xtreme LED floods and two CycFX8s.

These were arranged on four trusses flown around the O2 Arena’s central LED
display cube. For the opening ceremony these production trusses were lowered in to
a trim height of 12 metres above the playing area below.

The BMFL Blades were the stars of the intense 2 minute opening show.

Milan used them to map and project a tennis court created from light onto the area
below, with gobos dividing it up with the line markings.

Also, with precision use of the BMFL Blades’ framing shutters and gobos, the lights
mimicked a computer generated tennis match for a section of the show … two
tennis rackets batting a ball – all made of light – between them, which really got the
audience on their feet.

The tennis game idea was first initiated by the Robe’s own lighting project manager
for the event, Petr Kolmacka. Other elements of the show included the morphing of
the three colours making up both the Czech and Russian flags combined with strobe
effects and the rainbow colours on the tennis court to symbolise peace and
tolerance.

The rest of the lights were used for general lighting during the OC on the play area
and around the audience, ramping up the drama as a rousing music track blasting
out through the PA system.

The lightshow matched the high quality of tennis played throughout the weekend –
where the results all hung on the final doubles game on Sunday in which Karolina
Pliskova and Barbora Strycova beat the Russian pair of Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova
and Elena Vesnina … to a “roof-lifting’ ecstatic reaction from the home crowd.

Says Robe’s CEO Josef Valchar, “Well … what can I say, we are all so proud to
support our truly world class Czech women’s tennis team, and it was a great honour
to be in Prague and witness the final stage of this achievement first hand’.