Rio de Janeiro’s iconic Maracana stadium will have a hybrid surface from March 2022. The Grassmax surface should be installed before the semi-finals of the Campeonato Carioca, the annual football championship in the state of Rio de Janeiro.

Stadium management has opted to reinforce the pitch with synthetic turf fibres, having concluded that no treatment has managed to successfully improve the heavily criticised quality of the field.

The selected Grassmax solution injects polyethylene fibres up to 18 cm deep into the top layer of the field. The amount of synthetic turf fibres used means that up to 10% of the field will consist of synthetic turf fibres.

“The Grassmax system combines natural grass and synthetic fibres to ensure consistency in all seasons. In other words, it is a 100% natural grass of the Celebration Shorts type, reinforced with polyethylene fibres, which are injected 18 cm and centimetres deep above the field surface. The technology of this system performs a ‘stitch’ between the artificial threads and natural grass using special equipment.

“First, we have the removal of 15 cm of the existing lawn, then comes the cleaning of the entire area and preparation for receiving a new layer of sand with a suitable and uniform grain size. After that, the levelling of the new sand layer is carried out by laser by checking the pruning. Finally, the lawn is planted in sprigs, herbaceous seedlings consisting of leaves, roots, rhizomes, and rhizomes without the presence of soil. A few days after planting and the formation of the new lawn, the work of sewing threads into the soil begins.

“This system always ensures a uniform surface, has greater efficiency and resistance to trampling, maintains more playing hours per year than the classic non-reinforced surface and is responsible not only for drainage, but also for regulating the amount of water and soil temperature, and for improving the growth conditions of the lawn,” a statement by stadium management read.