1982 World Rubik's Cube Championship


The 1982 World Rubik's Cube Championship was a competition for speedsolving the 3×3×3 Rubik's Cube.
It was held in Budapest, Hungary, on 5 June 1982. Contestants selected from 19 countries took part. Minh Thai from the United States of America was the winner with a best time of 22.95 after three attempts for each contestant. The top attempt of three was taken as the competitor's score. First prize was a gold-plated Rubik's Cube.
Writing shortly afterwards, David Singmaster who was one of the judges, described the competition as being efficiently organized, although at one point power for the TV and the display timer failed in the middle of a trial. The cubes were selected by Ernő Rubik himself, and according to Singmaster "competitors described them as pretty good". However, writing around 20 years later, Jessica Fridrich who had participated in the contest, criticised the cubes for being "really hard to turn and were not prepared for serious speed cubing".
This competition was the first officially recognised competition of its kind. The next competition was held in 2003 in Canada, with many differences to the competition structure and many other puzzles being added other than the Rubik's Cube.

Results

The results were:
PlaceNameTimeStatusCountryAttempt 1Attempt 2Attempt 3
1Minh Thai22.95WR27.1622.9527.97
2Guus Razoux Schultz24.32ER24.3231.5126.51
3Zoltán Lábas24.49NR24.4927.5828.21
4Lars Petrus24.57NR35.4233.1124.57
5Ken'ichi Ueno 24.91AsR27.5627.9024.91
6Jérôme Jean-Charles25.06NR27.8731.1825.06
7Julian Chilvers25.95NR30.5925.9527.46
8Duc Trinh26.63NR37.4426.6336.09
9Giuseppe Romeo28.11NR34.2341.7528.11
10Jessica Fridrich29.11NR31.4929.1133.20
11Eduardo Valdivia Chacón29.62SAR34.9129.6230.01
12Luc Van Laethem29.73NR32.9234.9829.73
13József Borsos30.02NR36.7535.3330.02
14Ronald Brinkmann30.59NR34.8030.5932.52
15Jari Sandqvist31.17NR31.17DNF*31.56
16Manuel Galrinho37.11NR40.7448.6737.11
17Piotr Serbeński37.50NR44.4037.5040.86
18Svilen Tenev47.29NR51.8847.2947.35
19Josef Trajber50.16NR50.1654.9358.99

WR = World Record
ER = European Record
AsR = Asian Record
SAR = South American Record
NR = National Record