More than 50 slow smokers from Denmark and Sweden participated when the two countries co-organized their qualification rounds of the Cigar Slow Smoking World Championship. With both defending champion Henrik Kristenson and world record holder Igor Kovacic being from Sweden the country was expected on beforehand to dominate the competition, but it turned out to be mostly a Danish affair.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll eyes were drawn to this CSWC qualification round due to the big names,\u201d CSWC founder Marko Bilic says.\u201dSome of the best world slow smokers participated so the outcome was a huge surprise and proof that CSWC is a sport in which anything can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
First off, Kristenson wasn\u2019t able to attend, so when Kovacic\u2019s cigar suddenly burned out after only one hour and 15 minutes, Sweden had lost two favorites to the title. The second surprise of the night was when the cigar of reigning Danish champion, Nick Schwanley, unexpectedly lost its fire.<\/p>\n
\u201cHalfway in he was in a comfortable lead with Michael Iversen from Denmark and Mikael \u201cZeke\u201d Zander trailing,\u201d judge and organizer Pierre Gustavsson says. \u201cThen his cigar suddenly started burning up on one side, and in 20 minutes he was out of the race.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the end he finished eighth, but Denmark still snatched the top six places of the competition. At 1 hour, 46 minutes and 10 seconds, three-time Danish champion Michael Iversen once again took home the title. No surprise there. The runner-up could have been Swedish, though.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Zeke hade only raised his hand earlier he\u2019d finished second or third,\u201d Gustavsson says. \u201cInstead he burnt the ring and got a 15 minute penalty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even though it pushed him down to seventh place he was still the best Swede and will therefore represent Sweden in the finals in Split in September. His final time, including penalty, was one hour 30 minutes and ten seconds.<\/p>\n
Top three<\/p>\n
More than 50 slow smokers from Denmark and Sweden participated when the two countries co-organized their qualification rounds of the Cigar Slow Smoking World Championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":53628,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[49,63,44],"tags":[5366],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53627"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}