Picture: Musco Lighting did the lighting at Sha Tin racecourse in Hong Kong among other race tracks around the world.
Lighting at the city track is being upgraded by world experts. Musco Lighting are associated with international tracks such as Happy Valley, Sha-Tin, Cheltenham, Wolverhampton and Meydan.
Derek Field, MD of Musco Lighting South Africa was interviewed by Gold Circle’s Michele Wing and explained, “Five years ago we probably would have been asked just to light the track. Now we’re asked to make the lights flash and asked what can we do from an entertainment point of view? So our whole mandate really has changed from providing lighting for TV to providing lighting for TV plus entertainment for the spectators and for the fans. So it’s going to be quite exciting what we can do here. It’s probably the biggest lighting project that’s been undertaken in Africa to date as a single individual project. Hollywoodbets Greyville will be the 21st track that we’ve converted to LED worldwide. Probably the biggest tracks we’ve done have been Happy Valley and Sha Tin in Hong Kong. We’re currently working on Wolverhampton, which was actually our first international track that we lit 30 years ago, so we’re upgrading that to LED. Cheltenham and Southwell in the UK are obviously two big ones, as well as several of the big tracks in the Middle East.”
He continued, “There’s not just a stark difference in appearance between the old metal halide lights and the new LEDs or light emitting diodes, but most significantly there’s a difference in functionality. Obviously there are energy reductions, but from an eventing point of view the big thing is it’s instant on, instant off. So there’s no need to have lights warm up to get to the right level, so you’re not using the lights as often. But also there’s flexibility that the lights are controllable individually. So at a lot of sports events you’ll see entertainment and flashing lights, so there is the ability to run shows for fans and race goers. So it just gives you a bit of extra, I suppose, entertainment for the public. One thing that Musco takes great pride in, even with our old HID technology, is our ability to control light. So we’ve been in the sports lighting industry for over 50 years now and all of our focus has been in terms of getting as much light as possible onto the playing surface or onto the track. So we’re quite unique in the fact that we use a combination of reflectors and downward shifts to bring light onto the playing surface, where we probably have a thousand different combinations of beams that we can use to create light specifically on the track itself.”
He said about Hollywoodbet Greyville, “We first installed an HID floodlighting system here just over 10 years ago. This is really to update the system to LED, to the latest technology that’s available in the market, and that’s in line with a lot of the top racing tracks that we’ve already lit around the world. 56 lighting poles and 9 lighting stations across the tops of the grandstands are being refitted or replaced. We’re looking to do about three poles a day. It’s probably about four hours a pole, although of the 56 poles, 13 had to come down and be replaced.”
Derek continued, “It’s more about uniformity as opposed to light levels. So if we can create a consistent light level across the track, then it’s good for the horses and hopefully it will help the jockeys as well. The biggest thing you’ll see is the colour temperature. The LED’s got much more of a blue spectrum of light, so it’s going to appear lighter, and everything will be a bit sharper, so from a broadcast point of view, it’ll be a much better picture, the colours will be much more vibrant, and stand out more. Besides the white light on the track, coloured lighting will be installed across the front of the grandstand for light shows on the straight. We’ve got a dynamic team coming in to do the controls programming, so we’re really looking forward to putting on a show for the fans.”
Derek concluded, ” If everything goes according to plan, which it has to date, we should be complete by the end of May.”
