The day began with tragic circumstances while we sat having breakfast at 9:30 in the morning a news bulletin came on the television telling the country that the Polish President’s plane had crashed tragically killing him his wife and over 90 other people on board. Igor Mazurenko put his head in his hands and everyone was clearly shocked and stunned at this terrible news. May I offer my condolences to the family and friends of all those people killed in this tragic accident.

Things took a while to quieten down and as a result of this the 2 day event was shortened to 1 day as Sunday would now be a day of Mourning. So with 214 competitors from around 30 clubs across Poland we had to run both the left and right hand events in 1 day. However Igor and his team did not flinch they just turned up the pace and ran extra tables with Marcin Mielhiczuk handling the technical side with his excellent scoring system, along side Piotr Szczerba (Head Referee of Poland) who had an amazing 30 strong team of well trained Referee’s. It all went so smoothly you would think that they had had a months notice and not just 1 hour to make these changes.

All in all it was a great competition with enthusiastic but well disciplined competitors confirming that Igor and his team are world leaders in organising competitions.

David Shead

Guest Referee