Shock, horror - re-run of Aust Latte Art Champs

admin

understand that the Australian Latte Art Champs were re-run due to a discrepancy on the voting forms used by the judges, and the previous winner lost the title, to be replaced by Con from VIC - is anyone able to fill us in on the full details of what happened??

-A :o

psaigh

A hugely disappiointing situation indeed.  As most of us know the original australian latte art comp was held on the saturday of the australian barista comp, after the repecharge (open) heat before game day.  Habib Maarbani won with a score of 30/50, Erin came 2nd (27 pts) and Con 3rd (25pts).  Habib was crowned the australian champ, given the trophy and told he was off to denmark to compete for the world title. The issue however was that Nathan Wakefield had done most of the organising for the whole event and on a very, VERY sad note, had a member of his immediate family pass away.  Due to these deeply tragic circumstances he was obviousely unable to attend the day.  Now (and to their credit) the rest of the judges/organisers tried to muster up and get everything up and running without hiccup however, somewhere along the line, the 2007 score sheets were used to judge the competitors, not the 2008 sheets (and yes, they are quite different). After much debate it was decided that the only fair thing to do was to re-fly all the competitors back to melbourne and re-do the event from scratch, there-by makng habib's victory null and void. The comp was then re-held last sunday at cafenetics with the Con coming out victorious on the day, and hence being crowned the 2008 Australian latte art championship, and is now off to denmark latter in June. Hope this answers a few questions.

psaigh

Now for my personal point of view.  As competition doesn't really determine who is the best, but instead who is the best on the day, I really feel it's unfair to discount all the nerves, effort and work put forward by the contestants at the first 2008 latte art comp.  And it is my view that if another contestant won "part 2", it should have gone to a shootout between Habib and that person. Best 2 out of 3 seems a lot more fair to me than stripping the previous persons win and starting fresh. However, what is done is done, and I wish Con (a very deserving winner) all the best in keeping the World Latte art championship trophy here in Australia for a third year.  Good Luck!

DoubleRistretto

Congratulations to Con, but I agree - sounds pretty shonky... any word on how Habib took things? In the US there'd be lawsuits flying around! dR

askthecoffeeguy

in america the contestants would've ended up shooting each other then the cops would've come and blown all the spectators away!

psaigh

apparantly Habib was very gracious about the whole thing.  He was very supportitive of Con and was smiling all day.