Anand’s appeal to postpone World Chess Championship match turned down

TNN, Apr 20, 2010, 12.23am IST

CHENNAI: Viswanathan Anand’s appeal to postpone his World chess championship match against Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria in view of the volcanic eruption has been turned down by the organising committee.

Anand was stranded in Frankfurt on Friday on his way to Sofia, the venue of the match, which is scheduled to start next Friday with an opening ceremony on Wednesday.

The organising committee confirmed it got an e-mailed request for a three day postponement from Anand and also a word from FIDE about the situation.

However, the organisers stuck to their guns and insisted that the opening ceremony should be held as scheduled on Wednesday as it involved a series of commitments, both commercial and political.

While declining Anand’s appeal, the committee said, “We can postpone the press conference. Unfortunately, we cannot postpone the opening ceremony scheduled on April 21 at 6 pm. The invitations to all the official guests, sponsors, politicians, TV stations and all the media was already sent long time ago. We have signed a lot of commercial contracts with serious penalties for us in case of some changes.”

The committee, though, agreed to consider the possibility to postpone the first game of the match for one day to Saturday (April 24) but it needed the consent of the chairman of the organising committee, Bulgarian PM Boyko Borissov.

“This will take some time. We will inform regarding our decision not later than the afternoon of April 20 (Tuesday),” the committee said.

Technically, neither the World Chess Federation (FIDE) nor the All India Chess Federation has a role in this because the contract is between Anand and the organising committee. FIDE has the right to intervene in extreme circumstances but the current scenario may not have reached that stage yet.

Meanwhile, Anand is believed to have started his journey to Sofia by land but this could not be confirmed because the Indian was not available either on phone or email. If he had started on Sunday, he would be able to reach Sofia latest by Tuesday morning. Anand’s concerns will be about travel fatigue and disruption of his preparations.



Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Posted by Picasa
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Tags: , , , ,