The vertiginous, upside-down Danza de los Voladores added a unique dimension to this opening ceremony as, for the first time, four teams simultaneously threw themselves off the top of four 30m high specially manufactured poles.

Veracruz has strong associations with the voladores tradition and achieving the required stability and a tolerance of 25mm over the 30m pole height took careful calculation. Securing the poles within the stadium environment required a system of stays and guys, with each pole being tethered to 15 tonnes of ballast in each corner of the stadium. We also manufactured the geometric Aztec-inspired cauldron, the design making good use of our 5-axis tooling facilities while our 3-axis facilities were put to use on the intricate fretwork on the mirrored central medallion.