RI chess teams receive quiet welcome
RI chess teams receive quiet welcome
JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian men's and women's chess teams
touched down here Saturday after two intense weeks at the 32nd
Chess Olympics in Armenia.
The welcome ceremony at Soekarno-Hatta airport was modest as
none of the National Sports Council's top brass were present. The
Indonesian Chess Association's executive director, Mahnan
Kamaluddin, was part of the small welcoming committee.
The chess players achieved mixed results at the biennial event
held in tension-filled Yerevan, Armenia. The Indonesian women's
team climbed to 10th place from 24th two years ago, but their
male counterparts slid to a distant 44th from 28th.
"The close relationship between players and officials was the
key to the women's team's success," non-playing captain Edward
Tobing said after receiving a flower garland from Kamaluddin.
The national chess body predicted earlier that the quartet of
Maria Lucia, Upi Damayanti Tamin, Lisa Lumongdong and Lindri
Widjajanti would only join the top 30.
After erratic play, the women fought back to sweep Portugal
and the United States, both by a score of 3-0. The 100 percent
results in the last two games boosted their points collection to
24 after 14 games, six points behind gold medalist Georgia. It
was Georgia's third consecutive title.
Russia's unchallenged men's team also won its third
consecutive title, this time with 38.5 points. Russia was without
official world champion Anatoly Karpov and sidelined world
professional champion Garry Kasparov in the final match.
A total of 73 women's teams and 112 men's teams competed in
Yerevan, a decrease from two years ago when 81 women's and 124
men's teams took part in Moscow.
Indonesia fielded a men's team weakened by the absence of its
two top players Utut Adianto and Edhi Handoko, who pulled out due
to illness. But non-playing Iptain Jamil Jamal praised the
performances of the quintuplet of Ivan Situru, Cerdas Barus, Dany
Yuswanto, Salor Sitanggang and Bobby Kurniawan.
"It wasn't too bad. They did their jobs as expected, although
it might have been a different story if both Utut and Edhi had
come," Jamal said.
Utut and Edhi are scheduled to play in the Intisari Cup
tournament here, which starts today. (amd)