Lithuanians
Are Crowned The First Ever World Online Debating Champions After Narrowly Defeating England
2009-10-05 14:57:38 - Lithuania wins a tight decision over England in a worthy finale of the Inaugural World Online Debating Championship
In an extremely well contested and engaging final, Lithuania emerged victorious to be crowned the first ever world online debating champions. The final itself lived up to all expectations, with Lithuania’s proposition that “We should prize freedom over security and abolish anti-terrorism legislation” ultimately being too much for England to successfully argue against. En route to the final, Lithuania notched up victories against rivals Latvia, as well as Canada, South Africa and South Korea. This run included victory against three English speaking countries, a truly remarkable feat for the Eastern European team.
In getting to the final, Lithuania showed quality and impressive knowledge on a range of complex and controversial issues. Their victory over South Africa in the quarter final saw them successfully argue against interest rates on personal lending being capped at 20%, whilst in the second round Lithuania overcame a strong a Canadian team on the issue of taxation on inherited wealth. The final itself was contested over five days, with the decision on which team should propose and oppose decided by a toss of a coin.
With the panel of six world class judges having the responsibility of selecting a winner, both Lithuania and England needed to be on top of their game to impress and walk away with the WODC trophy. Lithuania’s bold move of comparing US anti-terrorism legislation with the laws introduced in Nazi Germany ultimately paid off, with the risky strategy being backed up with clear, informative and engaging arguments.
Judge Colm Flynn, former chair of the World’s Council, was full of praise for the two finalists, saying “I think it is the best of the debates I have judged, with the two best performances I have seen coming from the teams in the final as you would hope a final should be but rarely is.” Fellow judge Logan Balavijendran believed the final was “a good debate, close and engaged.” These sentiments were echoed by Chief Adjudicator Neill Harvey-Smith who was pleased that the final lived up to expectations, “Congratulations to both teams on a fitting finale to inaugural World Online Debating Championships.” In regards to how Harvey-Smith came to his final decision to award victory to Lithuania, he added “They wrote clearly and argued about the issues, not getting bogged down in technical points about the process of debate as much as the opposition did.” In recognition of their achievement, the Lithuanians will be the first team ever to receive the WODC trophy, and will no doubt look to defend it at the next tournament.
The WODC created by Debatewise has been heralded as a great success and the final can be held up as a demonstration of the high level of debating skills from around the world. The hope will be that the next WODC will be just as competitive and exciting as the inaugural tournament, with the twenty five teams who competed this year being hopefully joined by even more countries looking to take on World Champions Lithuania.
To view the debate between Lithuania and England, as well as all the debates from the competition, visit www.debatewise.com/pages/wodc-debates
http://www.thelithuanians.com/
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