On the very first day of the twenty fourth World Memory Championships in Chengdu established longstanding world records already began to fall, as Poet John Milton Metaphorically put it, like the leaves in Vallombrosa.
After Completion of Names and Faces, Binary Numbers and Hour Number
Marwin Wallonius is overall leader
Alex Mullen USA is in Silver
Simon Reinhard Germany in Bronze
The top three have opened up a massive four hundred point gap before fourth placed and the remaining field.
A key objective of the World Memory Championship is to test, stretch and identify the limits-if ANY- of the Human Brain. At a DAY ONE evening dinner gathering of sponsors,organisers and World Memory Sports Council Officials on a luxury Dinner Cruiser along the illuminated main Chengdu river, President of the Organising Committee Professor Tony Buzan announced shattered records to ecstatic applause:
Marwin Wallonius of Sweden has annihilated the previous World record for binary numbers, on this occasion breaking the hitherto -thought by some to be impossible – : 5000 barrier.
Meanwhile, Alex Mullen ,rising star from USA , soared past the previous record to score 3029 in the HOUR NUMBER discipline.
Will these be the first of Many in Chengdu, with its World Record entry for the WMSC, to present officially ,according to its new authorised Mandate, to the Guinness book of World Records?
Newly co opted WMSC member Alexander Keene lavished particular praise on the speed and efficiency of the Sixty strong Chinese Arbiter team, trained by mr Guo Chanwei and Miss Sophie Huang, both recently promoted to level Two arbiter status.
Also singled out for extreme merit under intense conditions were Chief of Ethics Dominic O Brien , literally the ” Orwellian” “Big Brother” , supervising with aquiline eye his optical empire of sixteen Security Cameras. Also level four arbiter and multiple world Mind Mapping Champion Elaine Colliar , who kept careful tally of the mountains of paperwork required for these exacting tests of Mental Power.
As dignitaries, workers and Vips of WMSC, including their Serene Highnesses Prince Marek and Princess Petrina Kasperski ,cruised at night past the shimmering river fountains in front of the illuminated Hengda Hotel and Conference Centre, memories of previous towering crenellations of Global Mental Literacy were evoked. Just as the Veen Island Palace of revolutionary sixteenth century Astronomer Tycho Brahe was known as Uranieborg, the fortress of the stars, so Hengda will go down in the annals of WMC co Founder Professor Tony Buzan’s ongoing quest for Global Mental literacy as:
THE FORTRESS OF THE BRAIN.
May the Games Continue!!