Checkmate for the Olympiad?
By WARD LUCAS
Fast forward and imagine this: You’re watching on television the 2012 Olympics in London, the host city of the XXX Olympic Summer Games. The opening ceremonies have just ended and you are anxiously awaiting the first event.
The master of ceremonies introduces the competitors for the first match-up. Out comes Viswanathan Anand of India. He takes his place in the arena. Anand is a grandmaster of his sport and a former world champion. Thousands cheer while hundreds of tricolor flags of deep saffron, white and green are being waved by his countrymen.
His opponent, Vladimir Kramnik of Russia, enters the arena from the opposite side, draped in a white, blue and red robe, representative of the Russian flag. The crowd erupts in thunder as the two stare each other down. Anand looks a little nervous because he knows that Kramnik, who is also a grandmaster, is considered by many to be the current undisputed champion of the sport.
The sport? Chess.
Chess? Chess is a sport?
Yes, indeed. The two-player board game which features each player allowed to move their 16 pieces according to specific rules is a sport.The champions take their seats at a card table at the center of the arena and begin to play … chess.
Although not currently an official event in any upcoming Olympic Games, chess was recently and officially recognized as a sport by the International Olympic Committee. Recognition as a sport by the IOC is a prerequisite, not a guarantee, for inclusion as an Olympic event. Chess, under the World Chess Federation, has received the honor of becoming a sport.
…Is chess deserving of becoming an official Olympic sport? Who knows? One thing is for certain, however. Playing chess can be mentally and physically taxing and those that indulge in the pastime have different views on the board game that scored big with the IOC.
Here is the full article.
Sport for sure.
IIRC the IOC made a ruling that chess is a “mind sport” then promptly modified the Olympic Charter to specifically exclude “mind sports” from the Olympic Games.
It matters little whether you consider chess as a sport or not. But it definately should not be called an athletic event.
Anyone saying you need physical fitness to play elite level chess need only look at 2 of players (Gelfand and Svidler) in WCC tournament.
I am a former NCAA athlete (tennis). I’m also a reasonably
good chess player. Which sport is more exhausting, tennis or chess? I will say playing a 4-5 round swiss tournament over a weekend is more difficult than playing a multiple round tennis tournament
over the same period of time. Both sports require no small amount of thinking. Physical fitness will help your chess skills. Chess players, at the elite level will benefit from
being in good physical shape. As
a lifelong athlete, I have great
respect for chess being considered
as a sport and would welcome it
as an Olympic event.
i am a chess player and a fan, but i dont consider chess to be a sport. certainly not any more a sport than tic-tac-toe or scrabble.
sure the olympics would boost the recognition of chess. it would be great for the marketing. but nothing more.
as i think there are other ways that can help the marketing, i feel complete irrelevance toward chess reaching or failing to reach the olympics.
It would be interesting to hear the Klitschko(spelling?) brother opinions both are avid chess player and current or former World Heavyweight Boxing Champions. I wonder whether they would support chess in the Olympics?
I agree in principle, but would hate to see groups vying for checkers, casino gambling, etc. to be made into olympic sport using similar justifications.
It is a challenging article to read, which is fine. However, such a circumstance like this is almost always exploited to a destructive degree it seems.
For example, the black community in the USA, at one time a powerful symbol of unity, was destroyed — became deeply divided — when the struggle for racial equality was being equivocated with homosexual liberation. This offended many people, and rightly so. It was a form of plagiarism in many people’s honest appraisals. It was an offense against the black community, as in, it was a form of exploitation.
What would be needed is to have professional chess writing that properly articulates what I and a lot of other people believe to be that one special quality about chess that does not compare to any other game sport, a quality that qualifies chess as the sole olympic sport of its type.
“Anand looks a little nervous”
Not the Anand I know about 🙂
Chess will make it into the Olympics as a sport ONLY IF draws are abolished and the only possible outcome of each Olympic chess match is a win or a loss