Glasgow revealed the city’s spectacular new world-class athletics arena following the stunning transformation of Hampden Park.
The centrepiece at the heart of the Games, Scotland’s National Stadium will stage some of the most thrilling moments of the competition, with more than a thousand athletes going all out for gold and glory in over 48 events in seven days.
Hampden Park is already a legendary venue and scene of many international moments of intense sporting drama but months of construction were required to prepare it to host Athletics at next month’s Commonwealth Games.
The stadium’s stunning technologically-led transformation is now complete and features a revolutionary solution which has raised its surface by almost two metres, gaining the width and length required for an IAAF-approved Athletics track.
Along with the track, a full infield complete with freshly-cut grass sits on a temporary deck made up of 1,000 base panels which are supported by over 6,000 structural steel stilts. The recognisable Mondo track surface has been laid and lanes marked with the Glasgow 2014 start and finish lines painted in position.
The finished works, which saw approximately eight rows of seats removed to accommodate the wider field of play, revealed for the first time the close proximity that crowds of fans will have to the intense sporting action.
This is the first time this technology has been used on this scale to deliver a world-class Athletics event and it will enable elite athletes from 71 nations and territories to battle it out in front of a packed crowd of over 40,000 in the stadium and more than one billion TV viewers worldwide.