The grand final took place on the miners’ holiday—Barbórka. While the mining community celebrated its holiday, the young Olympians competed for the title of the best expert on KGHM and the region.
The School and Preschool Complex in Iwiny (Warta Bolesławiecka commune) was represented by two people. In the primary-school category, Stanisław Pachnik, and in the middle-school category, Gabriela Stelmaszek (a school may be represented only by the winner of the school qualifiers).
Before the final competition could take place, however, the participants had to pass through several stages of qualifying. After the aforementioned school stage, it was time for the next one. The organizers (the Jan Wyżykowski Friends Association) asked the participants to prepare multimedia presentations. Staś was given the topic “Copper Signs of the Times—The Sieroszowice Direction,” while Gabrysia received “The Intelligent Mine—KGHM of the Future.” Both completed the task brilliantly; Staś’s and Gabrysia’s presentations were appreciated by the committee members, which enabled the students from Iwiny to join the group of 20 semifinalists.
On November 23, the semifinal tournament was held in the Copper Hall of the community center in Sieroszowice. The semifinal was conducted according to the format of the television quiz show “One of Ten.” The seven participants with the highest scores qualified for the final. The participants’ level of knowledge was very high. Suffice it to say that, to select the finalists in the primary-school category, the competition committee had to ask the participants nearly 200 questions! The pool of questions planned for this stage was almost exhausted. Both Staś and Gabrysia were among the “magnificent seven.”
The final of the Olympiad of Knowledge about KGHM and the Region took place on December 4 at the Muza Cultural Center in Lubin. Exactly one year earlier, in the same place, Staś Pachnik had won the first edition of this prestigious competition. The final competition followed a format similar to the semifinal, based on “One of Ten” (although in this case we should write “One of Seven”).
The final contest began with a qualifying round in which each participant had to answer three competition questions in turn. If a contestant retained at least one chance, they advanced to the second round. One mistake by Gabrysia did not eliminate her chances. Staś made it through the qualifiers without losing any points.
The most exciting stage turned out to be the Giants’ Challenge, which was intended to select the three best contestants for the Superfinal. Compared with the previous year, most participants adopted the bold tactic of taking questions themselves (which were worth twice as many points). These points were extremely important, because the well-prepared Olympians quickly dealt with the 50 questions allocated to this round, and none of the seven players left the game. In this situation, the points total determined the result; in addition to points from questions, it included points for retaining chances. Despite losing one chance, Staś’s extraordinary activity enabled him to take a place in the Grand Final.
Gabrysia tried to follow a similar plan. However, her task was more difficult because losing one chance in the qualifying round and a second in the Giants’ Challenge put her on the edge; another incorrect answer would have ended her participation. Ultimately, thanks to the large number of answers she gave, Gabrysia finished just outside the podium and, unfortunately, did not qualify for the Superfinal.
It must be emphasized that this is a great success for our representative, and the experience she gained offers hope for a better result next year.
Staś already had such experience, and in the Grand Final, after gaining the first opportunity to answer, he took matters into his own hands. He answered question after question, leaving the host Beata Tadla (a well-known presenter of Wiadomości on TVP1) and the committee made up of KGHM’s elite astonished. Staś’s run was stopped by a slip of the tongue, which one of the committee members pointed out. Although the committee asked our representative to answer again to determine whether it really was a slip of the tongue or an established error, it nevertheless did not accept the answer. It seemed like an attempt to knock Staś down a peg; he could have continued his display of knowledge and had demonstrated the enormous amount of work he had put into preparing for the competition about the company represented by the committee. The error pointed out to Staś caused him to lose the initiative and the opportunity to shape the competition’s result in his favor. His rivals attempted to catch up with him in points, but their mistakes kept reducing their chances of winning. With five or six questions remaining, Staś passively watched the fight for second place, quietly enjoying his defense of the title.
For the students from Iwiny, the Olympiad of Knowledge about KGHM and the Region is a very prestigious competition. They attend school in a place that for many years was the heart of the Copper Basin. The school itself is a modernized building of the so-called workers’ hotel, where employees of ZG Konrad lived. The school’s patron is the Pioneers of Polish Copper (the person who proposed the school’s name was Jan Paździora), so the history of Polish Copper is their history. There are many indications that their future may also be connected with copper mining in this area.
Dariusz Pachnik/ii