Pakistani girl wins global memory competition

Emma Alam and Syeda Kisa Zehra break multiple world records during the championship

LONDON:

A young girl from Pakistan has won the 29th World Memory Championships global finals, beating more than 300 competitors from all over the world.

Emma Alam competed in over 10 disciplines in three-day competition which included participants from China, Canada, United Kingdom, South Korea, Vietnam, India, Malaysia, Algeria, United States, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Libya, Qatar and Iraq.

Emma Alam and Syeda Kisa Zehra from Team Pakistan also broke multiple world records in this year’s championship.

The World Memory Championships was founded in 1991 by world-renowned Tony Buzan and Raymond Keene with the aim to shine a global spotlight on the incredible power of human memory.

Emma Alam is a dedicated young girl from Pakistan and has competed in various memory championships. PHOTO: EXPRESS

The late Tony Buzan was the world’s top five speakers reported by Forbes Magazine. He was the one who popularised the idea of mental literacy as well as being the author/co-author of more than 80 books. Raymond Keene is Grandmaster of Chess and an appointed officer of the order of the British Empire by her majesty Queen Elizabeth.

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).

With the efforts of World Memory Sports Council, Asia Pacific Memory Sports Council, National Memory Sports Council of Pakistan and the Global Chief Arbiter Lester, the World Memory Championships 2020 had adopted online and synchronous mode, where the global memory athlete community competed synchronously in 16 countries and regions.

The candidates with the best, fastest and sharpest memory skills competed to demonstrate their intellectual power and to set new heights of what the human memory can truly achieve.

"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," Raymond Keene, global president of the World Memory Sports Council, said in his official statement.

He added that 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.

Raymond Keene congratulated Emma Alam and said that she is "one of the great sporting achievers for Pakistan, a unique heroine in pandemic stricken 2020, and supreme grand world memory champion for 2020".

Emma Alam was thrilled to win the prestigious global event. "I had aimed to give my best in WMC 2020, backed by a lot of daily practice for the past two years with my coach and the institute. It still astonishes me how powerful the mechanism of human memory is and the brain’s infinite information storage system."

She said that she planned on competing again next year with even better performance. "I congratulate all those amazing competitors who competed from across the globe."

Emma is a dedicated young girl from Pakistan and has competed in various memory championships including the 3rd Asia Pacific Memory Championship in Malaysia, and the 28th World Memory Championship in China, having won countless medals and trophies through her splendid performance. She is currently completing her studies through homeschooling.

Abeerah Ather, who is another member of Team Pakistan, achieved 7th position in the 2020 global rankings.

Emma and Team Pakistan were trained under the Institute of Human Memory Development International (IHMD).

The World Memory Championships is an esteemed tournament of mind sports, where skills of intellectual ability are measured as opposed to physical sports.

Mind Sports are a unique form of games compared to the Olympic Games where one celebrates excellence in athletic performance and the other celebrates the fittest brains on earth. Mind Sports are some of the most elite and prestigious sports being practised around the world today.

Only WMSC organised championships are recognised and accepted by the Guinness World Records. Emma Alam and Syeda Kisa Zehra from Team Pakistan also broke multiple world records in this year’s championship.

Last year’s 28th World Memory Championship took place in China and the overall champion was Ryu Song, a young girl from North Korea.