At the opening of the World Chess Olympiad, the athletes marched in front of the fans without a flag. Nobody disqualified the national team, but the chess players still came to the tournament without national symbols. Forgotten at home or spared money for a purchase?

A conflict that has become the property of the entire chess world.

“Vagabonds without a Motherland”

In the Indian city of Chennai, the World Chess Olympiad opened, which, according to the original plans, was to be held in Russia. Athletes from our country, unfortunately, will not be at the tournament, as well as representatives of the Belarusian team. The International Chess Federation, following the recommendations of the IOC, suspended two teams from participation.

Other national teams will take part in the struggle for the chess crown – the International Olympic Committee has not given any orders regarding their participation. At the colorful opening of the 44th chess games, athletes from 186 countries paraded, carrying 185 national flags in front of the audience. Apart from the Russian and Belarusian national symbols, the Indian spectators did not see the flag of Kazakhstan.

“Today the whole world watched our team, which at the Olympic Games went without a banner, like tramps without a homeland! Liana Tanzharikova, the mother of Kazakh chess player Bibisara Assaubayeva, wrote on social networks.

For what reason the Kazakhs became “tramps without a homeland” on Indian soil, uninitiated chess lovers could only guess. It seems that FIDE did not intend to punish athletes from this country. Why did the team, against which no sanctions were introduced, find itself in such an unenviable situation?

“Because the Kazakhstan Chess Federation, which is responsible for organizing the participation of the Kazakhstani team at the Olympics, did not take care, did not consider it necessary, forgot, regretted 20 thousand tenge, deliberately sabotaged, fundamentally did not take the Kazakh flag to the World Olympic Games,” Tanzharikova explained.

“From champions to beggars”

What made the Kazakhstan Chess Federation send athletes to prestigious competitions without a flag is not known for certain – official comments from sports officials have not yet been received. But any of these reasons, voiced by critics, be it sabotage, economy or banal inattention, seem very strange for a self-respecting organization.

By the way, this is not the first scandal in the chess world of Kazakhstan in recent times. In June, the grandmaster and the youngest world blitz champion Bibisara Assaubayeva said that the head of the KCF, Galim Khusainov, took her and several other representatives of the team to the Administration of the President of Kazakhstan to ask for 3 billion tenge for the federation.

— We were brought to ask for 3 billion tenge for the bureaucrats of the Kazakhstan Chess Federation. I am very ashamed of myself that I became a participant in this shameful performance. Obviously, today there was a dress rehearsal, the leadership of the KCF is preparing its premiere tomorrow at a meeting with the President of the country. I refuse to recognize people who are trying to make beggars out of champions as president and vice president of the federation,” Assaubayeva wrote on social networks.

Photo: © JACEK PRONDZYNSKI/FOTOPYK via ww / www.imago-images.de / Global Look Press

In KCF, of course, the accusations were denied, they called the post of an 18-year-old athlete a stuffing, on which bloggers have already begun to speculate. Other participants of the meeting also joined in the defense of the federation, including chess player Zhansaya Abdumalik, who suggested that her colleague simply “mixed it up somewhere, heard it inattentively somewhere”.

Bibisara herself, however, did not refuse her words, saying that she never confuses anything and does not speculate. The athlete even expressed a desire to undergo a polygraph test, and at the same time invited the head of the KCF and his deputy to this procedure.

Whether the “bureaucrats of the KCF” begged for billions, through whose fault the flag never appeared at the Olympiad – questions still do not have an exact answer. But in any case, there is no way to deny the existence of serious contradictions in Kazakhstani chess. The flag problem only allowed the conflict to pour out of the “inner kitchen” and become the property of the entire chess world.