A MagicTimes Exclusive
One of the most difficult things of late was to find the actual competition results for the 21st FISM World Magic Congress held in Lisbon, Portugal on Jul. 3-8. We had two people at the awards ceremonies trying to get the winners list for us. Both said that they could not follow what was going on on stage and were not able to get a list. Richard Robinson was first to publish the “First Prize” winners of the competition in Magic Show and that is the list that has been circulating on various websites as the results. Our e-mail to F.I.S.M. for a list is still unanswered. Finally, we contacted Hank Moorehouse who was the U.S. representative on the F.I.S.M. jury and he gave us all of the facts.
There were close to 150 competitors entered in the eight categories. Around a third of them competed in the close-up and cards divisions. Asked about the overall level of talent at this year’s competition Moorehouse told MagicTimes, “After the last F.I.S.M. in Dresden, the secretary general, Maurice Pierre wrote to the presidents of every F.I.S.M organization asking them to please upgrade the quality of their contestants to F.I.S.M. standards — and that did not happen. As in previous years there were some excellent acts, some good acts, and some that should not have been there.”The overall highest scorer and winner of the Grand Prix and the title of “World Champion Magician” was Scott the Magician & Miss Muriel from The Netherlands. This is the first time in the history of the award that it went to an act from the “Comedy Magic” division.
Here are the official results:
If you score the results by country as in the Olympics, awarding each country 3 points for first place, 2 points for second and 1 point for third, here is how the countries stacked up against each other. We will score the Grand Prix at 5 points.
1- Germany (1+3+1+2+1+1+2=11)
2- France (2+3+3=8)
3- Spain (2+2+2=6)
4- Japan (3+2=5)
4- Argentina (3+2=5)
4- Netherlands (5)
7- Finland (3+1=4)
8- USA (1+1+1=3)
9- Austria (1)
9- Brazil (1)
Day After Addendum:
We just received a copy of the results from the FISM office and we thank them for that. We also have seen that the wannabe news sites on the web have once again stolen our content and promoted it allover the place as original.
–Meir Yedid
