It appears the big surprise is the first Finnish breaking team Helsinkis A on 18 points. Congratulations
Sydney and Oxford both had 5 teams in the break both equaling their best ever performances.
As well as Helsinki there are first time breaks for Alaska, SMU, George Washington and KCL. The top team had 23 points. The lowest since 2003. As predicted 18 points and speaker points was the cutoff.
Assuming KCL is Kings College London and SMU is Singapore Management Uni then:
England have 14 teams in the break. Their best performance on record.
Canada on home soil only got 1 team in the break their worst performance for 8 years (although Oxford E is made up of two Canadians)
Helsinki is I believe made up of one Canadian and one English. Still, it's an excellent result for continental Europe - hopefully it can stimulate interest in Scandinavia in the activity.
ReplyDeleteOnly 2 Irish and 1 Scottish teams breaking is a bit more disappointing : I think this is due to the fact that only a small number of universities have functioning debate programmes in both countries - by contrast, top level speakers seem to be spread all across England if the performances by KCL, Manchester and Birmingham are anything to go by. Hopefully this can be worked on.
I see the US surge has been more or less held off: the much-fancied Yale only broke one team...
Birmingham's got a Canadian and an American. Also, there's an error in Ciaran's tab --- 22nd place is Alaska A, rather than Alberta A.
ReplyDeleteNiall,
ReplyDeleteWho would have predicted a US surge in a BP format? They have 3000+ university debaters in at least 4 separate formats. For them, BP is an enjoyable distraction--not the serious business Europe makes it.
Alex (Oxford E) is an American, did his undergrad at McGill and is therefore effectively Canadian for debating purposes.
ReplyDeleteis it just me, or is the website ubcworlds2007.com down?
ReplyDeleteYes the official site is down. I don't know why.
ReplyDeleteRE: "Why would we expect Yale to do well?"
ReplyDeleteBecause they won Oxford and Cambridge IVs this year.