Leeds Castle 1981- a piece of guitar history

Some very familiar faces, and some no longer with us.
A scary but great competition!
Thanks to Oren Myers for bringing this to my attention.

There were some notable events from this competition –  Tsuyoshi Horiuchi, the first prize winner had a tragic accident with the little finger of his left hand; Paul Galbraith, who won second prize was only 17 years old at the time, and there was an incident involving a prize sherry goblet and Eliot Fisk!

Here is a quote from Graham Wade’s second volume on Segovia:

“After the playing of three movements from the set repertoire and a movement from Fantasia para un Gentilhombre, the finalists were Eliot Fisk, Tsuyoshi Horiuchi, Cheryl Grice, Paul Galbraith, Stefano Grondona, and Yoshinobu Iwanaga. The competitors then went into the performance of a concerto and when this was completed the unanimous choice for winner was Tsuyoshi Horiuchi, with the youngest competitor, Paul Galbraith, second, and Stefano Grondona, third.

All finalists were given a silver sherry goblet, though it was at first reported that Eliot Fisk, disappointed with the result, threw his goblet into the moat at Leeds Castle. This story was eventually clarified in an editorial in Guitar where it was reported that the goblet had been thrown from a taxi and later retrieved by the driver, who was allowed to keep the article.”