Chess Olympiad in Dresden 2008

Olympiad in Germany? This has become reality now for chess players. The Chess Olympiad 2008 was allocated to Dresden on 29 October 2004 during at the FIDE congress. Dresden could assert itself against its fellow competitor from Tallinn with 69 to 29 votes.

Since some time, Kirsan Iljumschinow, president of the FIDE (World Chess Federation), has been making genuine efforts to declare chess too an official Olympic sport, and even introduced doping tests for chess players, which was however debated very much controversial amongst the players. Since chess is not considered being an official sport, FIDE is organizing the Chess Olympiad every two years aside from the official Olympic Games, which are in turn organised by the IOC.

By the way, the Chess Olympiad 2006 will take place in Turin, the city in which also the Olympic Winter Games 2006 will be held.

Ukraine and China win Chess Olympiad 2004

The Chess Olympiad 2004 took place in Mallorca. However, only team matches and no single competitions were held.
Ukraine became Men’s Chess Olympiad winner in 2004. It could assert itself in direct match against the hot favourite Russia and won the title wit three points in lead. The German team took the 16th place.

The People’s Republic of China currently places the strongest women’s team and even has a former world champion in its ranks. Thus, it was not a big surprise that the title defender was able to succeed in showing his strength anew and winning the match supremely against the USA. The German women’s team, which has at its disposal amongst others U18 world champion Elisabeth Pätz, took the 17th place.

It is interesting to note that in the meantime even a few Chinese chess players managed to reach world class status in International chess (Guoji Xiangqi), as the western form of chess is called in China. However, in reverse, hardly a western player was able to achieve world class status in Chinese Chess. The best non-Asian chess player does currently find his place within the world rankings of Chinese Chess on rank 49 (November 2004). He goes on start for USA, but he is however of Chinese origin.

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