UK Cigar Scene Magazine September Issue 9 | Page 14

2015 World Cigar Smoking
Championship Report
Over the weekend of the 5th to 7th of September the Cigar Smoking World Championship
was held in Split, Croatia. A packed weekend of festivities and cigar events culminating in
the Final held in the Grand Ballroom of the Radisson Blu Hotel.
The weekend began on Friday night with a dinner
at the Villa Dalmatia sponsored by Bespoke cigars
and continued with cigar, rum and chocolate
workshops at host hotel on the Saturday morning.

In addition, Mirko Giotto of Switzerland was given
the ‘Fair Play’ award.

This year 86 participants from 23 countries
took part. The winner of this year’s World
Championship was Oleg Paden from Russia with a
final time of two hours, 27 minutes and 41 seconds,
a time which breaks the world record of last year’s
world Champion Darren Cioffi from Nashville
USA.

The men’s and women’s winners were presented
with their prizes by Marko Bilic, President of the
Club Mareva in Split. The winners received unique
commemorative watches, hand made carved stone
plaques, a day on a superyacht and, on behalf of
sponsors Pernod Ricard, a bottle of Chivas Regal
25. The second placed smokers received a bottle
of Royal salute 18 and for third place a bottle of
Chivas Regal 12.

In second place finishing just 21 seconds before
the winner, was Igor Kovacic from Sweden. Stefan
Murayev from Russia came third some 11 minutes
behind with a time of 2 hours, 16 minutes and 47
seconds.

All the winners were also awarded a box of the
new Macanudo ‘Inspirado’ cigars. This Mareva
sized cigar will replace the Montecristo No 4 as the
cigar to be smoked in the competition in the next
three years, from 2016. to 2018.

The best placed woman was Anna Shapiro from
Russia with a time of 1 hour, 25 minutes and 19
seconds.

To complete a spectacular weekend there was a
boat trip on Sunday from Split to Lovrećina beach
on the Island of Brać.

To see more images from the competition see our Gallery Here
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