Islamabad: A young Pakistani girl, Emma Alam, emerged as the winner of the World Memory Championship 2020. She also broke multiple world records during this year’s championship in which 300 competitors participated from 16 countries.
Team Pakistan, which included Alam, Syeda Kisa Zehra, Abeerah Ather and Syed Nabeel Hasan, won the overall champion title, winning 13 medals and breaking four world records during the contest.
Alam said that she was “thrilled to win” the contest which was the result of “a lot of daily practice for the past two years with my coach and the institute.” She plans to compete again next year with better performance.
“It still astonishes me how powerful the mechanism of human memory is and the brain’s infinite information storage system” she said. Alam, who is currently pursuing her studies through homeschooling, has competed in various memory championships including the 3rd Asia Pacific Memory Championship in Malaysia, and the 28th WMC in China, winning numerous medals.
Emma Alam breaks 3 world records
• 218 names memorized in 15 minutes
• 195 dates (fictional) memorized in 5 minutes
• 410 random words memorized in order in 15 minutes
World Memory Championship (WMC) is an esteemed global contest of mind sports, where skills of intellectual ability are measured as opposed to physical sports. It was founded in 1991 by Tony Buzan and Raymond Keene to shine the global spotlight on the incredible power of human memory. Congratulating Emma Alam, Keene described her as “one of the great sporting achievers for Pakistan, a unique heroine in pandemic stricken 2020, and supreme grand world memory champion for 2020.”
Achievements of Pakistan team
In addition to winning the overall championship title, Pakistan team also won 13 medals and broke four world records. Alam won two gold medals in Names & Faces and Random Words, three silver medals in Historic & Future Dates and Binary Digits and Speed Number and two bronze medals in Abstract Images and Spoken Number.
Abeerah Ather who ranked 7th in the 2020 championship won one gold medal in Speed Number as well as two silver medals and one bronze. Syeda Kisa Zehra was placed 33rd, winning one gold and one bronze, while Syed Nabeel Hasan was ranked 41st in the global ranking. The champions were trained by the Institute of Human Memory Development International (IHMD) led by master trainer Sania Alam.
Youngsters from these countries took part in the event: Pakistan, United States, United Kingdom, China (Hong Kong and Macau), Canada, South Korea, Vietnam, India, Malaysia, Algeria, Libya, Qatar, and Iraq.
