China Live 5/8 World Memory Championship 2010

Twenty year old Wang Feng, the reigning Chinese Memory Champion, stormed to victory at the 19th World Memory Championships in Guangzhou, China tonight, winning the Gold Medal and smashing previous championship records in a hot contest against rivals from Germany and the UK. There were 128 finalists from over twenty countries competing for the title. Wang, a history student from Wuhan University, clinched the title in the final discipline of ten, when he correctly memorised a shuffled pack of 52 playing cards in just 24 seconds. Wang is the first Chinese citizen to win the World Memory Championships, widely considered a symbolic breakthrough for Memory Sport in China.

Wang's final result establishes him firmly as the planet's top memory man and his performance will be enshrined in the Book of Mental World Records. His closest rivals were the German Champion Johannes Mallow from Magdeburg, in Silver position, with defending titlist, Ben Pridmore of Beeston, UK winning the Bronze. Pridmore's single most impressive exploit in Guangzhou was his record breaking memorisation of 28 individual shuffled packs of playing cards within a one hour limit. Simon Reinhard of Munich was fourth.

In the parallel team competition, Germany took the Gold Medal, ahead of China in Silver with the UK capturing Bronze. The World Memory Championship was ranked as the highest rated news story on Saturday's Central China Television reports (CCTV), while, today, scenes of the new Champion, Wang Feng, being mobbed by fellow competitors and press, were screened on CCTV's 7pm broadcast. Eye witness Chris Day from London, General Secretary of the World Memory Sports Council, likened the public , competitor and media scrum ,engulfing the newly crowned champion, to an "animal with life of its own."

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