The Philippines finished third behind champion Poland and the runner-up combined IPCA (International Physically Disabled Chess Association) team in the first Chess Olympiad for Disabled Players held 29 January to 5 February in Belgrade, Serbia. Text and photos from fide.com.
Poland achieved huge success as the team led by GM Marcin Tazbir confidently won the Olympiad, defeating all of their opponents and scoring 12 match points.
The team of Physically disabled chess players (IPCA) won second place with 10 match points. Four teams: the Philipines, India, Serbia 1 and Uzbekistan, shared fourth to eighth place with eight match points. The cheerful squad of the Philipines came in third after a better tie-break.
Croatia – who had a bad start to the tournament – finished seventh, while second-seed Israel finished eighth and third-seed Hungary took the modest 9th place.
India and the Philipines (right) went head to head in the final round to decide third place!
The owners of bronze medals were decided on the tie-break among the group of teams with eight match points. The first tie-break criteria, the number of board points, was equal for the Asian teams of the Philippines and India (15:15), but the second tie-break, the sum of Sonneborn-Berger points, favored the Philippine squad, one of the most joyful companies in the Belgrade event!
The foundation of future Olympiads for people with disabilities
Grandmaster Thomas Luther had a pivotal role in making the first Chess Olympiad for people with disabilities happen. As the head of the FIDE Commission for people with disabilities, Luther and his team worked hard to get attention and support from across the chess world.
“I’m very happy! We worked on this for such a long time, and finally, we have done it. Successfully! This event is the foundation of future Olympiads for people with disabilities, and I am so proud and happy to have taken part in this”.
FIDE Managing Director Dana Reizniece-Ozola (third from right) comments:
We are extremely proud to have managed to organise this Olympiad! FIDE would like to thank the sponsors – the Serbian Government, the Serbian energy giant NIS, Coca-Cola, Rossety, the Serbian Chess Federation, the arbiters, volunteers and everyone else involved for playing a huge role in making this event happen and for making it a huge success.”
Reizniece-Ozola applauded the FIDE Commission for people with disabilities as well as other organisations and federation members working in this field.
“I am grateful to them for being agile and for providing honest feedback and helpful suggestions on how to make future Olympiads and events for people with disabilities even better.”
She noted that in the future, bidders for chess Olympiads would also have to commit to organising the Olympiad for people with disabilities. “From now on, this Olympiad will be a regular feature”.