As Britain’s physical athletes clock up record hauls of gold medals in Beijing, our mental athletes have been seeking to make their own mark in London in the UK Open Memory Championships at Simpsons in the Strand over the weekend of August 16 and 17.

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Ben Pridmore won the UK memory championship for 2008 in a dominating performance. In achieving this feat Pridmore has soared to the number one slot in the World Memory Rankings officially sanctioned by the World Memory Sports Council.
 
Tonight on ITV television (in the UK) at 9:00 pm Ben Pridmore stars in a programme about genius where he attempts to smash the world record for memorising a single shuffled pack of cards- just as  breaking the 4 minute mile was a huge psychological and physical barrier Ben seeks to smash the equivalent barrier in memory-25 seconds-will he succeed?

National award trophies from the UK Memory Championship were as follows:
Gold - UK open champion 2008 - Ben Pridmore
Runner up - Katie Kermode
Bronze - James Ponder

World records smashed in the UK Memory Championship

• 5-minute random words - Boris Konrad 106 words (previous record 84) 
• 5-minute binary numbers - Ben Pridmore 930 digits (Ben attempted 930  and recalled them perfectly - no errors) - Ben previously held the record with 795.
• 15 minute numbers - Ben Pridmore 819 digits (previous record 700 held  by Clemens Mayer)
• 10 minute cards - Ben Pridmore 364 cards (attempted and perfectly recalled 7 decks) - previous record 312 also held by Ben)

Memory as a competitive sport
 
The art of memorising as a competitive activity has come into its own. On Saturday August 9 the times ran a huge piece on the UK memory championships, while on Monday August 18 ITV  will screen an hour long documentary on -amongst other mental high achievers-the memory genius and newly crowned UK memory champion and world ranked number one  Ben Pridmore.
 
More news on the memory front, the 17th world memory championship takes place in the Kingdom of Bahrain starting October 23, while the UK schools memory championship is inviting entries and hopes soon to challenge the schools chess championship with its 74,000 entries.
 
The UK schools championship is organised by 8 times world memory champion Dominic O'Brien and is the only schools championship for memory officially recognised and sanctioned by the world memory sports council, which confers rankings, ratings and titles and governs the world memory championship.
 
Dominic said "So many kids go to school, are told to remember a whole bunch of facts but have no idea at all how to go about it. Of course this is the wrong way round-first they shd be taught how to remember properly and then shd come the facts and items to remember. That way it is a pleasure and empowerment for them-not a torture!"
 
For further details on the UK memory championship go to--www.worldmemorychampionships.com

Written by
Ray Keene OBE
International Chess Grandmaster