Unanswered letters for more than 3 months, delegations scattered in different hotels, lack of communication by FIDE officials, last minute change of regulations and conditions, unexpected extra costs. These are just a small part of the issues experienced by the teams of the upcoming Chess Olympiad 2024. The Secretary General of the Croatian Chess Federation Alojzije Jankovic comments, “It’s not a big deal to check with previous Olympiad organizers […] it’s not something new.”
Read more: Monaco, Scotland and Germany break the news / Turkey reports problems / England on accommodation issues / Anish Giri critical of the situation
GM Alojzije Jankovic added Croatia to the list of countries with issues. In a statement for Chessdom, Alojzije Jankovic says, “We were unpleasantly surprised when we got the info from the Olympiad organizers that due to single rooms upgrading we will be forced to separate some of our team members to another hotel, not so close to the one we have got.” However, GM Jankovic adds another level to this problem, “The hotel price which was offered for those additional single rooms, sounded really strange, compared to usual prizes of those hotels around the year. And what’s even more strange, a usual Full board was not included, so the offer for each meal was 50€(!).“
GM Jankovic, who was a brilliant commentator in the live studio of the recently concluded EIYCC , noted, “It’s not a big deal to check with previous Olympiad organizers how many countries have those additional rooms requests, it’s not something new. I’m only mentioning countries with players and captains, but how about trainers, journalists etc. There is no point in dividing the teams… It’s quite clear that someone was quite unsuccessful in negotiating the Olympiad hotels. We can understand that Hungarian ministry might be inexperienced in organizing such a big chess event, however, what hurts me the most is that our highest chess association, FIDE, is obviously lacking some organizational know-how. Frankly speaking in this case, I really don’t know on which level, but hopefully that will be improved in future!“
