One of the highlights of any World Bridge Championship is the President's Dinner. That was especially true of the one hosted by José Damiani, the President of the World Bridge Federation at these Orbis World Bridge Championships. A presentation to past winners of the Bermuda Bowl was one of many highlights. There were other presentations to some of the distinguished guests. This was the José Damiani's speech.

This time the traditional President's dinner has fallen on the occasion of the 2000 Orbis World Championships, which is the first event to be held under our new status of International Sports Federation.

Thanks to the marvelous hospitality of the Bermuda government and the Bermuda Bridge Federation, we have been able to offer you a magnificent tournament here in Bermuda. We would like to acknowledge our gratitude to both of them, and I am absolutely delighted to call

Indeed, quite clearly there is another partner who has given our sport enormous support, and that is Orbis Investment Management Limited group.

I am very happy to ask Mrs. Allan Gray, wife of the Chief Executive Officer of Orbis Investment Management Limited to come up and receive our plaque, which is presented with our sincere gratitude.

In celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Bermuda Bowl, which in the course of this time has actually been held on 33 occasions (this one is the 34th), we recall that after the first win in 1950 the U.S. retained the Bowl 14 times and Italy 13 - a truly formidable record. Despite the domination of these two countries, there are other Federations whose names appear on the Roll of Honour - France has won twice, Great Britain, Brazil, Iceland and The Netherlands once each.

Among the players, the undoubted record belongs to Giorgio Belladonna, who played for the Italian team on all 13 occasions and was also runner-up on many other occasions. Pietro Forquet won 12 times, Benito Garozzo 10, and other members of the famous Blue Team also won many times.

Our current number-one ranked player, Bob Hamman, together with our Past President Bobby Wolff, won the event seven times. We are lucky enough to have them both with us tonight as well as many past winners: Chip Martel and Lew Stansby and Eric Rodwell, who each won twice, Marcelo Branco, Gabriel Chagas, Dano de Falco, Dick Freeman, Ricardo Janz, Alain Levy, Michael Becker, Roberto de Mello, Franck Multon - they all deserve a big hand - please stand up. We have in the championships some other past winners who are playing but unfortunately not here - Paul Soloway, who won three times, Jeff Meckstroth twice and Christian Mari and Nick Nickell once.

And we will have some thoughts for all the past winners who make this game so attractive. Champions, this is clearly your dinner and I would like to invite your leader, Bob Hamman to say a few words.