Background
The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Athletics Championships Doha 2019 is a major sporting event. It was held between 27 September and 6 October 2019 in Doha, Qatar. It is the third largest sporting event in the world with 15,000 international participants attending.
The 10-day tournament hosted 1,772 athletes from 206 teams, who competed in 49 athletics events held in different venues spread across Doha. The Championships comprised 24 events each for men and women, plus a mixed relay. There were 43 track and field events, four race walking events, and two marathon road running events.
The most used venue was the renovated multi-purpose Khalifa International Stadium. The other venues were: The Doha Corniche, which hosted the walking races and marathon events; an outdoor venue attached to the Khalifa Stadium; and the Qatar Sports Club, which was used for training and warm-up purposes.
Challenge
The event faced a number of organizational challenges. The decision to hold the athletics event in the hot and humid climate of Doha in September and October meant that a ‘pre-session’ was held in the afternoon and a ‘main session’ in the evening. The Khalifa International Stadium used an open-air conditioning system to bring the temperature of the stadium to below 25 °C (77 °F). The new radios had to cope with the high temperatures and humidity.
Qatar is the first and only country in the Middle East so far to host the World Athletics Championships for track and field events. As ever with such major international sporting events, security was a major concern for the host country. The main challenge was how to efficiently manage the various events across the city, while ensuring the safety and security of high profile national teams, operational staff and the millions of fans.
The organizers had access to 470 legacy radios, which had been in use for more than eight years. The radios were old and had a lot of problems, which was costing money to maintain. Given the size and scale of the athletics event, the organizers needed to upgrade the system and enlarge the coverage area to provide the necessary level of communications.
Solution
Hytera was chosen to provide new radios for the games. Hytera provided 600 PT580H Plus TETRA hand portable radios and 14 MT680H TETRA mobile radios, which provide reliable and secure communications for the organizer’s team members.
The Hytera PT580H Plus radio increases the receiving sensitivity by 2dB and features a 3W RF transmit power capability. This enhanced capability means the radio can pick up weaker signals thereby enlarging the coverage area. This enabled all the different work groups to collaborate smoothly and efficiently over longer distances.
The radio offers clearer communications as it features an advanced audio chip with the latest noise cancelling technology. Users working in noisy environments therefore benefit from excellent audio quality. The Hytera MT680H TETRA mobile radios provided efficient critical communications, and supported a fast and accurate response. The radio is renowned for its proven reliability, easy operation and ruggedness, along with its ability to offer versatile operating modes to tackle all manner of applications.
The Results
Hytera's solution provided the organizers with the wider coverage, better audio quality, greater security and more reliable radios terminals they were looking for. The new radios enabled the event staff to communicate easily and collaborate more effectively to deliver a smoothly run and successful athletics event in Qatar.
