Following on from last night's entry, I also have the same kind of feelings about the world championship as I do about the French. Apart from the bit about how it hinders my training for the world championship, of course, because that would just be silly. But I'm not really all fired up about the WMC at the moment, and I haven't done anywhere near the amount of training that I should, with one thing and another. Turnout is going to be pretty low this year, with plenty of people who could just about afford one trip to Bahrain not being able to make it an annual holiday, and a probable lack of Gunther and all the other previous world champions. I'm told that there might be even more Chinese competitors this time round, but I haven't seen a list of names yet, and the one of them who I'm friends with isn't going to be there. I just worry that the whole thing's going to be a bit of a flop.
Still, this shouldn't stop me getting into some serious training. I need to knuckle down and get my brain in gear, quick. Shame I've got Paris this weekend, Sheffield next weekend for the othello, a brotherly visit the weekend after, and then we're practically in Bahrain already, even without the inevitable BBC-pestering that's also going to happen. I have a feeling I'm not going to win again this year.
I was wondering about the lack of certain names thus far however i'm sure it will turn out to be a gret weekend for all. Here's the list of registered competitors Ben:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.worldmemorychampionships.com/competitor_information.asp
Dai
ps. I thought you would be happy if you were the only person in the top ten to turn up as there's money at stake !
Well, I would be if I did this for the money :) I'm really more keen to have a good, exciting competition than to be the only one who enters and walk away with $10,000. (Which, incidentally, is worth more pounds this year than it was last time round! Yay for the bad economy!)
ReplyDeleteAnd the list of registered competitors usually lists roughly twice as many people as actually turn up, so it's rather worrying that there are less than forty people on it this year...
The list misses at least Johannes Mallow and Simone Nicklas from Germany who share an appartment with me and already booked their fligts.
ReplyDeleteIt also misses Dorothea Seitz from Germany, the German junior champion, who also takes part.
Also Lukas Amsuess is not on the list, who told me last week that he is competing. He also assumed Ed to come again.
So the list is not complete at all.
I think it's a disgrace that Tony has the WMC in Bahrain because of one business man sponsor!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure Tony makes a nice wad of cash from it all looking after himself, he should have kept it here in the UK and promoted it better with Sponsors and Cash Prizes to make it worthwhile people travelling to! $30,000 total prize money is nothing! Tony has become the Bernie Ecclestone of Mind Sports.
For the number of years the competitions have been running with Tony at the helm it's shameful on his part that the sport is not more widely known!
Less of that, please, Neil. I don't like such excessive criticism of any individual in my blog-comments-threads.
ReplyDeleteAnd as I've said to you before, many other people have tried to organise memory competitions with big sponsorship and publicity, and nobody has come close to matching the world championship. Which leads me to believe it's not actually as easy as you might think.
I'd certainly welcome a big memory competition in the UK that was well promoted and had some kind of prize money, if anybody was able to organise one - it doesn't have to be Tony and the WMSC, it's a free country and despite what they like to claim, they don't have any monopoly over memory championships - but nobody else seems to want to.