Pakistan's Emma Alam wins World Memory Championship 2020

• Emma Alam, Kisa Zehra from Pakistan break multiple World Records
• "I plan on competing next year with even better performance," says Alam
• Competitors from across the globe took part in the championship

Emma Alam from Pakistan, has won the 29th World Memory Championship leaving behind as many as 300 participants from across the globe.

Alam won the three-day competition, competing in more than 10 disciplines, which included competitors from China, Canada, UK, South Korea, Vietnam, India, Malaysia, Algeria, the 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.

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

The late Tony Buzan was the world’s top 5 speakers reported by Forbes Magazine. He was the one who popularised the idea of mental literacy. 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.

With the efforts of the World Memory Sports Council, Asia Pacific Memory Sports Council, National Memory Sports Council of Pakistan, and the Global Chief Arbiter Lester He, 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 Global President of The World Memory Sports Council Raymond Keene, in his official statement, said: ‘The field consisted of an impressive 300 competitors from 16 countries and from this extensive field the winner, the world champion from the 29th World Memory Championship, emerged from the Pakistan team, so excellently and expertly trained by Sania Alam."

Congratulating Emma Alam, he said that "one of the great sporting achievers for Pakistan, a unique heroine in the pandemic-stricken 2020, and supreme grand world memory champion for 2020.’’

Emma Alam said that she was thrilled to have won. "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."

The winner said that she was still astonished at how powerful the mechanism of human memory is and the brain’s infinite information storage system.

"I plan on competing again next year with even better performance. I congratulate all those amazing competitors who competed from across the globe,” she added.

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

World Memory Sports Council (WMSC) is the governing body for the Mind Sport of Memory worldwide. 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 practiced around the world today.

Only WMSC organized championships are recognized and accepted by the Guinness World Records.

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