The 2003 Mind Sports Olympiad was held at Manchester Conference Centre, part of The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) which has been announced as the event's home for at least the next five years. As in previous years the LTL training team dominated the Mind Mapping and Speed Reading Championships.
In the Mind Mapping competition Elaine Colliar retained her titles of Mind Sports Olympiad Champion and World Mind Mapping Champion, winning her fifth Gold Medal. After the event she announced that she is retiring from competition. Phil Chambers narrowly missed the title, coming first in the 'text' event and second in the 'Lecture' and "Freestyle' disciplines, thereby taking the Silver medal. Third place went to Philip Bateman from South Africa, a regular to the competition who showed a dramatic improvement in his style this year. LTL trainer Anne Jones came fourth.
The Speed Reading Championship was once again won by Anne Jones in spectacular style. Anne read at a speed of 2,284 words per minute which, when adjusted for comprehension, gave an effective speed of 1,285wpm. This was more than twice the speed of the Silver medalist, Andrew Harvey! The Bronze medal was taken by Henry Hopking.
The MSO Memory Event, arbited by Lady Mary Tovey and Phil Chambers saw great drama with the World Records for memorisation of Binary Digits (1101011...) broken by German memory champion, Gunther Karsten who memorised an incredible 3,180 digits. Not only that, the World Record for the 'One Hour Number Event' was broken by Swe Chooi Yip from Malaysia (with a score of 1,855 digits) and Gunther Karsten (with a score of 1,914 digits). Despite these amazing feats it was Ben Pridmore who's consistent performance and decisive memorisation of a shuffled deck of playing cards in 1 minute 38 seconds clinched the Gold medal. Overall, the standard was the best ever with five competitors achieving 'Grand Master of Memory Status' - The new GM's were John Louis from India and Fanny Boediman and Titiani Loren both from Indonesia.
A new initiative at this year's MSO was the Brain Power Academy, a chance for children and adults to learn the mental skills of Mind Mapping, Memory and Speed Reading from LTL's experts. The Academy was administered by Lady Mary Tovey and the seminars were run by Elaine Colliar and Phil Chambers.
