Alas, I"m not going to the World Memory Championships anymore. This is kind of a delayed announcement, because I"ve actually already announced it in a bunch of other places, but I figured it should be mentioned on my blog in some way or another. So yeah...not going.
Why? Well, it"s complicated. But basically a bunch of stuff went down with the Chinese sponsor - things were changed very last minute and prize money essentially vanished. So a lot of people have decided that they aren"t going anymore. No more Ben Pridmore (the 3 time World Memory Champion), no more Germans, and now no more Americans (me). I was really looking forward to doing the USA proud. I had practiced a LOT and was pretty sure I could finish top 10. Oh well. Next year...
I don"t know what"ll happen to the competition next atoledo.com year, but we will see. For now, I"m 100% focused on reclaiming my throne at the 2012 USA Memory Championships. I"ve seen and heard about a lot of people training real hard for this championship (mostly because of interest generated by Josh Foer"s book I"m assuming), but I can tell you that none of you have been training harder than me. Sorry. You may be better than me, but there"s no way you can train harder than me. Just saying. If any of you thought for a second that I was happy with my win this year and slacked off a bit, you"re dead wrong. Everything I could do last competition, I can now do better, faster, and more efficiently.
With that being said, I"m excited for any challenger who comes to the competition with the mind-set to beat me. I think it"s great for the sport. Anyways, gotta go run. Happy holidays.