| The Chess Olympiad ended on a scandalous note A huge scandal occurred at the closing ceremony of the 36th World Chess Olympiad, held in the town of Calvia on the Spanish island of Mallorca. During the solemn event, the President of the Georgian Chess Federation, Vice-President of the International Chess Federation (FIDE), Grandmaster Zurab Azmaiparashvili was arrested by the Spanish police.
The incident occurred when Azmaiparashvili left his seat in the auditorium and tried to get up on stage to express his bewilderment that the organizers had incorrectly presented the prize in the name of former world champion Nona Gaprindashvili, the legendary Soviet and Georgian chess player. It is awarded to representatives of the country that showed the best result in terms of the total points scored at the Olympics by the men's and women's teams. Suddenly, the grandmaster, despite his VIP accreditation, was knocked down by policemen. His timid attempts to resist led to the fact that law enforcement officers handcuffed the chess player and took him to the police station, where he was severely beaten. The Spanish police generally acted very aggressively. When Mr. Azmaiparashvili's wife, Marina Milorava, tried to intercede on his behalf, she was struck several times.
Attempts by FIDE officials to find out Azmaiparashvili's whereabouts were in vain - the police said that he was in one of the hospitals in the resort town, but did not say which one. Azmaiparashvili’s closest relatives have already submitted a request to the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs so that diplomats would look into the incident in detail and clarify the fate of the grandmaster. FIDE issued an official statement expressing outrage at the rudeness of law enforcement officials and the absolute inaction of the President of the Spanish Chess Federation, Javier Ochoa de Eshagen.
Azmaiparashvili himself in Mallorca combined the duties of the head of the delegation with the functions of an active player. Playing on the first board, he scored 5.5 points in ten games. The 44-year-old grandmaster is currently among the elite of world chess, ranked 31st in the FIDE rankings. Last year Azmaiparashvili won gold at the European Individual Championship.
True, even on the day of his arrival in Mallorca, the grandmaster managed to turn the organizers against himself by demanding two single rooms in the official hotel of the tournament. One - as for a participant, the second - as for an official. The second incident with the chess player’s competition hosts occurred when Nona Gaprindashvili arrived in Calvia on the eve of the closing of the tournament. They couldn’t accommodate her in the hotel for a long time, and the celebrity was forced to sit in the lobby with her things until two o’clock in the morning. Vladimir ILYIN |
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