10 June 2021

Russian Chess Players Honoured in Central Chess Club in Moscow

The CFR Golden Badge was awarded to Liudmila Belavenets.

 

Tuesday, June 9, a celebration took place at the Central Chess Club named after M. Botvinnik in Moscow for Russian chess players awarded with high state awards earlier in the morning of the same day. Opening the ceremony, President of the Chess Federation of Russia and senior coach of the men's national team, Andrey Filatov, highlighted our chess players’ having scored a unique achievement in national sports history by being simultaneously the European, World Championship and the FIDE Online Olympiad winners.

Andrey Filatov praised the support from Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation (Minister Oleg Matytsin was present at the ceremony), and Federation sponsors: businessmen Gennady Timchenko and Andrey Guriev, Rosseti FGC UES and others. The CFR President highlighted the contribution of coaches who had spared no effort or time in training young talents. Andrey Filatov sealed his words by presenting the highest Federation award - the CFR Golden Badge - to the remarkable children's coach, GM Liudmila Belavenets.

In her return speech, Liudmila Belavenets thanked the CFR for the honour and noted being delighted to be among the first awarded with the Golden Badge along with world champions Boris Spassky and Anatoly Karpov, a legendary GM Yuri Averbakh and the merited coach of Russia Boris Postovsky.

Andrey Filatov presented Lyudmila Belavenets and Anatoly Karpov, who also attended the ceremony, with the famous Art Russe wine and chess set. The many-time world champion Anatoly Karpov had received CFR Golden Mark a little earlier when celebrating his 70th birthday.

Minister of Sports Oleg Matytsin congratulated the chess players on state awards and wished them more victories to come.

Speaking on behalf of Russian female chess players, Kateryna Lagno thanked the Ministry of Sports and the Chess Federation of Russia for their support. Kateryna expressed hope that next year’s edition of World Chess Olympiad would finally take place in Moscow in the habitual format with the strongest world GMs attending it physically and the Russian team taking gold medals yet again.

In his speech, FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich recalled that chess was better than all other sports put together suited to the challenging conditions of the pandemic with many online competitions taking place in 2020. It was then that the idea of the FIDE Online Olympiad first came to mind in which the Russian team ended up taking the gold medals.

The musical part of the ceremony saw the famous singer, People's artist of Russia Oleg Pogudin perform several well-known romances. He was accompanied by pianist Oleg Vainshtein.

The ceremony’s official part closed with a speech from the Russian President's Aide Igor Levitin, who once again congratulated chess players on well-deserved awards and wished them further success to come. 

Pictures by Eteri Kublashvili