A former Officer’s Club from World War I set the stage for the third edition of the Belgian Cigar Smoking World Championship national qualifier. In this stately mansion built during the first half of the 18th century both new and familiar faces came to participate in what organizer Dinny Vandamme calls “the slowest race on earth”.
“It was an even larger field of participants, which is not evident in a country like Belgium where organizing in publicly accessible places and advertising is not permitted,” Vanndame says.
36 out of 64 guests took a shot at the title and the many prizes provided by the sponsors and all eyes were on last year’s champion Marco Pareijn, who was then the first Belgian to reach the two-hour mark.
“In the opening hour, the current champion was certainly not on course, though,” Vandamme says. “There were at least five people doing better than him, but while he was able to keep calm, nerves took over for the other competitors. They took too many risks and one by one they systematically lost their burn and had to leave the table.”
Five people reached one and a half hour as Pareijn seemed more certain to win. The Belgian record was in reach.
“In the background, the four remaining candidates competed for a place on the podium. Christophe Van Bruwaene was able to narrowly settle the score for third place with a time of 1 hour 45 minutes and 45seconds. Shortly after, Pieter Baratto was able to cash in on second place at 1 hour 46 minutes and 9 seconds.”
With everyone else out of the game, one question remained: Was Pareijn going to beat the national record. The answer was yes. At 2 hours 18 minutes and 4 seconds he improved his time from last year with eleven minutes.
“This time was also good for a provisional 12th place worldwide,” Vandamme says. “Of course there are many qualifiers to come, yet we secretly hope to see our Belgian tricolor in the final top 20 times of 2024.”
- Marco Pareijn 2:18:04
- Pieter Baratto 1:46:09
- Christophe Van Bruwaene 1:45:45
