This year's armwrestling world championship was held in the city of Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. To participate in the competition were registered around 1100 exhibitors from nearly 50 countries from all continents. Why is this event differ from other?

Organization. Blagoevgrad is a small town with well-established infrastructure, located a hundred kilometers from Sofia. After arrival in Sofia athletes had shuttle buses to the town of Blagoevgrad, the same shuttle service organized on the day of teams’ departure. The most convenient was to travel by taxi in city. Hikers can take a walk, even though it might be far enough.

To drive athletes from the hotel to the competition hall and back there were also shuttle buses, which went strictly according to schedule.

Athletes were accommodated in several official hotels of the event. In my opinion, the only disadvantage was that the majority of hotels were small and the chance to meet friends and just to chat over a cup of tea in the hotel cafe were quite small. Although the noise level was too low, so the athletes could rest properly.

Skaptopara – a hall, which passed the championship. It is a large room, and there were enough space for a scene, VIP tables and stands. In my opinion, it fits is for the competition very good. A small drawback – the ventilation, due to which in the evening in the room became stuffy. It is worth adding catering. Catering company arranged a cafe right in front of the entrance to the hall, and everyone could have dinner, drink coffee, eat cake (delicious, by the way J), and continue the competition.

Competitions were held in eight tables with the usual system. Organizers refused to call the athletes to the tables by making a choice in favor of two screens mounted on both sides of the stage. This was a double-edged sword: the noise level down, but the screens were set up poorly, and sometimes there was quite impossible to read something. There were no categories schedules. The program sometimes was faltering, during the struggle the category of 90 kg on the right hand it refused to work at all, and the last matches were done manually.

As you can see, some of the questions the organizers came up with the responsibility, but in some places the championship slack. The federation have to work on bugs in technical part of competition.

And we will continue to tell you of the championship in our next articles, stay tuned!