2024-03-15 07:49:25
In 2024, World Sleep Day will be celebrated on March 15th.
Source: AP 2023
MOSCOW, March 15. /TASS/. The organizers of the two world sleep championships are working on creating a new tournament. One of its founders, Shane Thomson, told TASS about this.
This year, March 15 became World Sleep Day – it is celebrated on the last Friday before the spring equinox (March 22).
The idea to hold the World Sleep Championships arose in 2020, shortly after the start of the coronavirus pandemic. An international group took on the implementation and came up with a new discipline – racing sleep. They joked that this was the most popular sport in the world: 7.8 billion people could take part in the competition – at that time the entire population of the planet, which over the next four years exceeded 8 billion.
The tournament began with a three-day qualifying round, the main round lasted five days. In between there was a day’s break for rest and recovery. The participants competed according to the Olympic system – elimination, with the winner of the final being declared the champion. The winner of each round was determined based on the performance of a special electronic ring, which was used in everyday life to track sleep and physical activity.
“We have been running the tournament for two years, but now we have taken a break because we are creating a more automated application that connects to sleep devices,” Thomson said, without going into details about the implementation of the new project.
The creation of the tournament also had a social function – it was supposed to remind people of the importance of sleep, the lack of which has a detrimental effect on health.
Siesta as art
Competing in a dream was invented in Spain. In 2010, Madrid hosted the first and so far only national siesta championship. The idea was born in Tobarra, a small village in La Mancha, and an initiative group from Santander, which founded the national siesta association, began to implement it. The main goal was to preserve the tradition of afternoon naps and rest.
“20 minutes of sleep after eating will be enough to maximize your performance during the evening. It doesn’t matter whether you work, study or play sports,” the organizers noted.
20-minute segments formed the basis of the competition. The tournament lasted for one and a half weeks. Five people participated in each round. The doctor used a heart rate monitor to determine whether the competitor managed to fall asleep. The top two from each round received prizes (€30 and €20 respectively). The best were determined by the points scored. They were awarded for the speed of falling asleep, for every minute of sleep, elegance, snoring and the most original position during sleep. The participant with the highest number of points won the general classification.
The winner of the tournament was an unemployed security guard from Ecuador – 62-year-old Pedro Soria Lopez fell asleep three minutes after the start of the round, accompanying his siesta with snoring at a volume of 70 decibels. For his talent he was rewarded with a prize of €1 thousand.
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