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)