The king has fallen!
Hauke Walter from Germany won his first Cigar Smoking World Championship in 2018. Five years later he became historic as the first one to win twice, and last year he re-wrote the history books in two ways by being the first one to defend the title, and subsequently to win three championships. At the 2025 grand finale, which moved back to Split after a guest appearance in Dubrovnik last year, the streak came to an end, though.
There was a lot of talk about the new Oliva cigar and for how long the participants would be able to keep the ashes going. With fewer three-hour performances throughout the season than usual, a qualified guess would be less than that, and so it was. After 2 hours 38 minutes and 9 seconds, Walter had to admit defeat, leaving two smokers in the race. Surprisingly, none of them were Anastasia Arsenova, the record holder of the season with who smoked for 3 hours 42 minutes and 6 seconds in Kazakhstan, incidentally the fourth best time ever as well. She was out after just 1 hour 43 minutes and 49 seconds.
It wasn’t any of the other three-hour smokers from this year, like Oleg Pedan, Alexander Shagai, Sergey Galevsky or Mariusz Kowalczyk, wither, but it was still two familiar names; Tomasz Żołądkiewicz from Poland and Tormod Skaaraas from Norway.
“You just can’t rule him out,” I recently wrote about Skaaraas, although he only reached about two and half hours at the Norwegian qualifier, and Żołądkiewicz wasn’t exactly a dark horse, either. This double vice world champion and the first one ever to break three hours made his return to slow smoking this year, and he was just five minutes short of that magic milestone when he ended up second at the Polish equivalent.
For another six minutes they went head to head before Skaaraas’ cigar burnt out, leaving Żołądkiewicz alone to claim the title of world champion, thereby affirming Poland’s status as one of the absolute greats in the slow smoking world. After 2 hours 46 minutes and 11 seconds the deal was done. He decided not to risk it and put out his cigar, bringing back the trophy to Poland, three years after the victory of his countryman, Borys Szkodziak.
- Tomasz Żołądkiewicz POL 2:46:11
- Tormod Skaaras NOR 2:44:54
- Hauke Walter GER 2:38:09
