UPCA was represented by an enthusiastic 5-man team at the European Teams Championship in Seville on October 21. Here's who we were and how we did (180 participants):
Name |
Club/Location |
Time |
Individual
Ranking
|
Doc Garr
|
Pocono |
1:36:43 |
18 |
Andy Hamilton
|
Chicago
|
1:18:14 |
39 |
Raymond Lykins
|
Alabama |
1:08:35 |
53 |
Chris Karas
|
Arrowhead |
0:54:32 |
79 |
Vernon Vig
|
New York
|
0:47:41 |
93 |
The winner again was the world champion Gianfranco Ruscalla with a time of 2:42:00. That's well below his world record of 3 hours 33 minutes but nevertheless shows his slow smoking skills.
Team scores are based on the total time of the top three smokers on each team. If I calculated correctly, the UPCA team did 4:03:32. This was the ninth best team time, but you won't find us listed since this was a European Team Championship and apparently the organizers did not think we qualified for that. Regardless, this was the U.S. group's best showing ever. We're definitely making good progress!
The event itself was as much fun as always with smokers from some 20 countries. We visited with many old friends and had a great time as tourists in Seville which is a beautiful little city full of treasures. Hopefully next year more Americans will join the group and come along to compete in Poland.
