Author: Hannah Minas
Swisscubing Cup I – 2019 in Sonvico TI on the 5th and 7th of January 2019.
On the first weekend of the year, around 30 participants – among them several first-timers – found their way to Ticino. In the first edition of the Swisscubing Cup, it was all about collecting the first cup points. Fittingly, the competition started off with the special events Fewest Moves and 4bld.
In FMC, our World Record holder Reto Bubendorf (35, 26, 28) secured the first 50 cup points by overtaking Oleg Gritsenko (28, 29, 35). Tobias Peter (45, 35, 40) came in third after pushing Hannah Minas (35, 37, 49) from the podium. Several competitors got good singles, but only five ended up having a mean.
The only event without a Swiss champion 2018 started off with many DNFs. But the competitors got into gear and nearly everybody succeeded. Oleg (3:56.76) won convincingly, followed by Valentin Lanz (5:54.38) and Tobias (5:56.63).
The first finals of the basic events followed Saturday afternoon. Tobias clearly won 5×5 (1:08.83), followed by Reto (1:16.62) and Lorenzo Vigani Poli (1:21.11) from nearby Italy. One-handed was also won by Tobias (13.98), who relegated Reto (15.46) and Tommaso Raposio (16.54) to second and third place. In Skewb, Ben Zwicky (5.50) prevailed against Tobias (5.78) and Reto (6.41) and secured his first podium.
The first final on Sunday was 3bld. The winner was Tobias (48.44), followed by Valentin (57.73) and Oleg (58.31), both of whom had DNFs in the first two attempts. In the 2×2 finals it went back and forth. Eventually, Luca Rizzi (3.20) had the lead and narrowly defeated Tobias (3.21) and Reto (3.60). He took advantage of his momentum and surprisingly won in 4×4 (39.33) ahead of Tobias (39.88) and Reto (41.38). Close behind was Ben (43.89) with a great average. In Pyraminx, the favorite again prevailed: Reto (4.21) won ahead of Hannah (5.49) and Tobias (5.54).
Ending the competition, the 3×3 final was conducted in Head-to-Head format. Even though the finalists did not quite reach their peak (was it the enchanting January sun?), the usual suspects prevailed and Reto (10.08) won, followed by Tobias (11.01) and Luca (11.06).
These three are also leading the Swisscubing Cup ranking after the first competition: Tobias (231) is just ahead of Reto (227.5) and Luca (142.5). They are followed by Oleg (104) and Valentin (89), who were able to exploit the double amount of points for the special events.