And so it has begun. The 17th season of the Cigar Smoking World Championship is here, and just like almost always, it started in Norway.
The talk of the town last year was the new Oliva competition cigar. The Oliva Mareva CSWC was designed to shorten the competition time, and at first it seemed like it had worked. Later on in the competition a number of people would pass the magical three-hour line, but in Norway the dominating duo from the last few years, Tormod Skaaraas and Rolf Broch, finished around two and a half hours.
This year, the winning time wasn’t even two hours.
“The cigar was behaving very differently compared to last year, organizer André Veiby from Augusto Cigars says. “The cigar burnt much faster, resulting in several surprises on the way.”
After just six minutes, Erik Andli, who smoked for 1 hour and 54 minutes last year, was out, and after 45 minutes, eight participants had been eliminated.
“Last year, that number was two,” Veiby says. “Multiple cigars burnt fast and unevenly, and after 1 hour and 30 minutes, there were only three left.”
In the end, the Norwegian qualifier was decided in the final seconds. Like so many times before, Skaaraas came out victorious at 1 hour 59 minutes and 21 seconds, with last year’s runner-up, Brede Rørhus, only 17 seconds behind. This was Skaaraas’ fourth win in a row. The biggest improvement came from Reidar Valberg, who went from last place in 2025 to third place this year. His final time was 1 hour 32 minutes and 30 seconds.
Whether this will be the new norm or not remains to be seen. It’s fair to assume that Skaaraas, who finished second behind Poland’s Tomasz Żołądkiewicz in the Grand Finale last year, eagerly awaits the coming results, just as the rest of the slow smoking world probably has noted what happened in Oslo.
When and where the next qualifier is, we will know on Friday, when the rest of the schedule is released.
- Tormod Skaaraas 1:59:21
- Brede Rørhus 1:59:04
- Reidar Valberg 1:32:30
