I must admit, that before coming to Vimmerby, I hadn’t looked up where I was going to. As it turned out on the spot, the town is the birthplace of Astrid Lindgren (the author of Pippi Longstocking) - city, where Astrid was born and raised. There were also some episodes for the movie written there. Between many, we had an opportunity to see the tree, where Pippi hid her lemonade. It was an amazing experience for those who did read the said book more than 30 years ago.

Back to the competition – Swedish Championship was organized by the Federation, which exists for over 20 years. The competitions were held few times before, therefore... nobody knows what its number was.

There were 264 participants from 28 clubs in 59 categories. At the weigh-in on Thursday, Friday and Saturday every athlete fit properly to his category. Unlike other tournaments in which I took part, athletes weighed in club order, came in time and basically all were weighed quickly. In general, less than 10 athletes had to use a sauna to quickly loose weight.

The competition was very quick and efficient. Since Sweden we are using our new IT system for the competition, so sportsmen needed some time to get used to it and to follow their surnames on a large screen above the stage. However, after an hour of the competition, we did not need to invite participants to stage. They waited in line, and as soon as their names appear on the top – they were already near the table. During the two days we had only one official protest and one "discussion" with the judges. But even the discussion was very peaceful as per the words you could often hear from the Swedish coach: "Stop blaming the judge and do everything as it should be". Those words should be learnt by most sportsmen in the world of arm wrestling.

The sport aspect of the competition was on a very high level.

Preparation and execution – all very good. Technical side – well, I did what I had to do.

In conclusion, I should say briefly: Swedes, keep it up!

Marcin Mielnicziuk