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Statement by the Global President of The World Memory Sports Council
Raymond Keene OBE
The World Memory Championship was founded jointly by myself and Tony Buzan, famed inventor of Mind Maps , at London in 1991. Since then the championship has grown from just a handful of competitors from just one country, to an event of global dimension with many hundreds of entrants and numerous participants from a huge number of different nations. The main point of the championship was to offer a new field of endeavour , in which to display the limitless frontiers of the human brain.
Since 1991 , the championship has travelled to various high profile international venues, including The Kingdom of Bahrain, Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University, Imperial College London, The Royal Festival Hall, Olympia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hainan and Wuhan ( in 2019).
So far , so good. However, the year 2020 turned out to be different, so different in fact that , due to the Coronavirus, virtually every major sporting and cultural event across the planet had to be cancelled. Such cancellations and postponements included the world chess championship , Wimbledon tennis grand slam, The Tokyo Olympics, The London Promenade Concerts, and the abolition of public attendance at football matches. Even Christmas and New Year celebrations were put on hold as a result of The Pandemic.
The one shining exception was the 29th world memory championship, which by a miracle of organisation and global coordination, was successfully put together by our dedicated team, with the Chinese City of SANYA as its base.
My congratulations go to everyone involved in this marvellous feat and especially Chief Arbiter Lester He.
The field consisted of an impressive 300 competitors from 16 countries and from this extensive field the winner , world champion from the 29th World Memory Championship , emerged from the Pakistan team, so excellently and expertly trained by Sania Alam.
In achieving their success Sania and the new champion employed those characteristics of Genius identified and described in Buzan’s Book of Genius. Such qualities include determination, vision, perseverance and persistence.
So congratulations to Emma Alam , one of the great sporting achievers for Pakistan, a unique heroine in Pandemic stricken 2020 , and supreme grand world memory champion for 2020.
Ray Keene OBE
Global President
World Memory Sports Council.
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