This year was the  63rd Year of the Horse Of The Year (HOTY) show. HOTY is the UKs biggest indoor equestrian event and the lighting was again overseen this year by Lighting Director Mark Strange of Strange Design.  With two arenas, 1500 horses, 1400 competitors and 65,000 spectators this event was significant.

Mark used 80 moving heads along with LED truss toners and 144 dimming channels on his Chamsys MagicQ MQ100 Pro with a Chamsys Ethernet to dmx box and external touchscreen.

Mark says "Much of the show is live on Sky TV.  The show jumping is lit mostly with tungsten (300 floods in the main arena) whilst moving lights are predominanlty used for the display shows such as the Household Cavalry and the Mounted Police which are choreographed to music.  There are also some live bands. 

One important function of the lighting is to mark out the course using irised down Varilites as pinspot markers. My main concern was that if the lighting has a glitch it could cause a horse to bolt...this never happened thanks to my Chamsys MQ100 Pro. I am very happy with my desk and the support I have received at ChamSys”