During the transportation of the players and journalists of the Candidates Matches from the airport, a local child unexpectedly runs to the road. In order to avoid a serious accident the drivers of the buses had to apply a forced breaking which however pushed some of the passengers forward and they got some injuries.
After careful medical examinations they were released from the medical control as their injuries were not serious and did not require further treatment.
Dr. Peter Rajcsanyi
Press Officer Candidates Matches for the 2007 World Chess Championship tournament
Source: globalchess.eu
The following came from Magnus Carlsen’s father:
The incident with the bus was unfortunate but everything seems to have worked out OK.
One thing that troubled me was that the bus seemed to continue at an unexpected high speed in spite of the driver pulling the breaks. We seemed to float like on a wet road.
When inspecting the break marks on the road, I found a 10 meter break mark behind the right hand front wheel, but only a 5 meter mark behind the front left wheel and none behind the back wheels (which I thought normally takes most of the break power).
The tires also seemed quite worn out . Old tires combined with uneven or missing break power obviously did not contribute positively in a dangerous situation.
Regarding the net-meeting at Nettavisen today; It was a short one due to anunstable internet connection, and Magnus also had to reconnect to the net-meeting for every response he made.
Henrik
This was reported by Rob and his sites are http://www.rob-vlaardingerbroek.nl and http://rob-vlaardingerbroek.blogspot.com
Here is the report by chessdom.com
You’d think Kirsan could use some of the money he steals from his people to buy a modern bus or at least pay for decent maintenance, instead of using Soviet leftovers.
It isn’t just the equipment – often the equipment is OK but what is lost is the whole culture of maintenance and upkeep. Preventive maintenance isn’t typically a key operating concept in many developing countries. Transportation systems are often overloaded and undermaintained – when coupled with poor road maintenance – all are key risk factors.
If Kirsan uses some of the money he steals to buy a modern bus, then what would be the point of stealing the money?
I am quite annoyed to hear this piece of news. I hope that all players feel good and that no damage was done psychologically to any of the players. It were probably very tense moments and humans tend to take them each in his own way. Some keep their head and some don’t. These things outside the chess board should not be part of the game and because the players were together they saw each others reactions, which may be quite disturbing to some of them. Very unexpected incidence and I hope Kirsan will apologize. It will be respectful if he does. Chess players can be sensitive and paranoid thoughts can inadvertently pop up. Although it is very unlikely that there was a conspiracy to hurt somebody specific, the human mind in general and that of a chess player specifically can take very mysterious roads. I hope that Kirsan will learn from that and that things will continue smoothly. We don’t want another robbery (Referring to Radja in Mexico) or a toilet gate. We want to see fair chess being played. Let’s hope the spirit in Elista will be great and that this incidence is really nothing.
Abie
Hi,
another odd case in Elista 😉
a) ‘orange’ in Kamsky Karpov match
b) ‘toilette war’
c) bus accident with all pretendents
Fortunately I am not top chessplayer :-).
The fight is not only on the board.
Regards
Pony
Actually the front wheels take most of the braking.