Pakistan’s Emma Alam wins global memory competition

Emma Alam from Pakistan has won the 29th World Memory Championship which saw 300 contestants participate from across the globe.

The three-day competition included competitors from China, Canada, UK, South Korea, Vietnam, India, Malaysia, Algeria, the United States, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Libya, Qatar, and Iraq.

Alam and Syeda Kisa Zehra from the Pakistani team  also broke multiple World Records in this year’s championship.

World Memory Championships was founded in 1991 by an English author Tony Buzan and English journalist and author Raymond Keene to shine a global spotlight on the power of human memory.

The late Tony Buzan was among world’s top five speakers, as per Forbes Magazine. He was the one who promoted 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.

The participants with the best, fastest and sharpest memory skills competed to show their intellectual power and set new heights of the potential of human memory.

Global President of The World Memory Sports Council Raymond Keene, in an 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.”

He congratulated the winner and 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.’’

Meanwhile, Alam said that she was excited 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,” said the winner. “I plan on competing again next year with even better performance. I congratulate all those amazing competitors who competed from across the globe.”

Alam has also competed in many memory championships before including the 3rd Asia Pacific Memory Championship in Malaysia and the 28th World Memory Championship in China and has won several medals and trophies. She is currently completing her studies through homeschooling.

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

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