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Memory sports not for the weak of mind
Which is which: Participants focus on memorizing faces and names at the 2019 Asia Open Memory Championship in Sanur, Bali, on Oct
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hich is which: Participants focus on memorizing faces and names at the 2019 Asia Open Memory Championship in Sanur, Bali, on Oct. 5. (JP/Ni Komang Erviani)
When the time ended, the committee members distributed another set of papers. This time, the papers only contained the people’s faces. The participants were given 30 minutes to show their memory prowess by jotting down the names of the featured individuals.
“That was good, hopefully. At least, I’ve tried my best,” a 13-year-old Indonesian student Aulia Nadia Azzahra, said after completing the “names and faces” session.
Aulia was among the 114 memory athletes competing at the 2019 Asia Open Memory Championship, held by the Indonesia Memory Sports Council (IMSC) and Global Alliance of Memory Athletics in Sanur, Bali from Oct. 5 to 6.
The event included 10 competitions on memorization skills, ranging from five-minute to 15-minute categories on remembering various things, such as numbers, cards, as well as pairing faces and names, years and events.
Aulia did not have to worry that her best was not good enough. She succeeded in jotting down 84 names. To put things into perspective, an average person would struggle to memorize 20 names of strangers within 15 minutes.
Hailing from 14 countries — including China, Japan, South Korea, Mongolia, the Philippines, France and Poland — the participants were trying to be the best memory athlete in the region.
Aulia was no exception.
Flying from Tangerang to Bali for the championship, the eighth-grade student of SMP IT Aulady junior high school set herself a target of being named an Asia Memory Sports Alliance (AMSA) grandmaster, another step toward moving up to world-class level.
“I just want to travel around the world,” Aulia said when asked about her motivation to be a memory athlete.
Aulia’s older sister had started earlier in the sport and has been going across the world for many competitions. This has motivated Aulia to also take part in the brain-focused sport, and she decided to take her first competitive step in 2013. Since then, she has traveled to many regions in Indonesia and overseas for competition, including the Philippines, Singapore and Hong Kong.
The two-day competition in Bali was basically a stage for Aulia to demonstrate her ability.
At the end of the competition, Aulia, alongside two other Indonesian athletes, received the grandmaster title. The other two were 15-year-old Yossyifa Zahra and 17-year-old Amira Tsurayya Muniruzaman.
Becoming a grandmaster is not easy because there are very high requirement standards, such as the ability to recall at least 600 numbers within 30 minutes, 312 cards within 30 minutes and 52 cards within two minutes.
“Indonesia has now a total of nine grandmasters,” IMSC president Yudi Lesmana said proudly.
Indonesia, however, has very few grandmasters compared to other countries. Yudi said China had at least 80 memory grandmasters.
Memory sports is relatively new to most Indonesians. It was first introduced in Indonesia in early 2000, through Yudi Lesmana, who was a junior high school student at that time. Yudi became familiar with the sport after being introduced to it by his teacher, who came from China.
Yudi then started his career as a memory athlete in 2010, the first from Indonesia. He later tried to introduce memory sports to as many people as he could through courses.
“Now thousands of people have joined the memory sports community in Indonesia […] Not all of them have the confidence to be an athlete, but I feel happy to see them,” Yudi said.
Despite the fact that memory sports is relatively new to Indonesia, Indonesian athletes have earned much international recognition in the last several years.
During the championship in Bali, for example, Indonesia collected several medals.
Among the medalists were two Indonesian students: Janet Valencia from SMA Regina Pacis senior high school in Bogor and Yossyifa Zahra from SMA 1 state senior high school in Depok, both in West Java, who managed to win gold medals.
Janet won gold in the memorizing faces and names competition, recalling 112 names, while Yossyifa won hers in the memorizing random words competition. Both also broke the national records in those categories.
Another medalist was Rinaldy Adin from SMA 8 state senior high school in Jakarta. He won the bronze medal in the faces and names competition.
Indonesia memory grandmaster Shafa Anissa, a student of SMA Kesatuan Bangsa Yogyakarta, also won a bronze medal in the random images competition. Shafa’s victory catapulted Indonesia into third place overall in the competition, after Mongolia and China.
Yudi emphasized that the medals won by Indonesian memory athletes had proven that the new sport could contribute positively to the country’s global reputation.
“My dream is, someday, this kind of sport is taught in every school across the country,” he said.
Bey Sapta Utama, founder of IMSC, said memory sports had become a solution in education problem nowadays, where most students lack focus as a result of addiction to electronic gadgets.
“In memory sports, they need to really focus on one thing. It can train them to be more focused on anything they are doing or trying to achieve,” Bey said.
