4 June 2016
All Sochi Roads Lead to Kamchatka
The start of Belaya Ladya in Dagomys in the review of Vladimir Barsky.
For the third year in a row the final of "Belaya Ladya" takes place in the already well-known to all chess players health complex "Dagomys". Founded in 1969 and restored to life only recently, the geographical representation of the tournament has been on the increase. In the 2016 final participating are 82 Russian and 9 foreign teams since Armenia, Belarus, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Mongolia, which already attended the event in the previous year, have been fortified with the squads from China, Latvia and Estonia.
As usual, the opening ceremony went off lively, and was a lot of fun. As soon as children entered the area in front of the concert hall "Balkans", they were greeted by heroes of fairy tales, which immediately initiated dances, different versions of tag games and other entertainments of the like nature. In the lobby everyone willing could have his face painted in a good sense of this word. It was also possible to engage yourself in sand painting and setting fire to soap bubbles right on your palm. However, this pyrotechnic fun had to be abandoned soon as a firefighter in civilian clothes was being vigilant and told the magician to stop fireworks.
Following a half hour's warm-up the action shifted into the concert hall. Even though the delivered speeches were not lengthy, there did take place quite a number of them: the nominated category the "brevity is the soul of wit" saw competition in short speeches between RCF Executive Director Mark Glukhovsky, Deputy General Director of the Timchenko Foundation Igor Baradachev, General Director of the "Dagomys" health complex Aleksan Bagdasaryan, head coach of the Russian national teams Sergey Yanovsky and Deputy Rector of Sergey Prokofiev Music School Konstantin Italjev.
Mr Janovsky said, “The Belaya Ladya's coverage could only be compared to that of the Russian Junior Championship. A great number of children take part in this event at its different qualification steps; this year almost as many as 7,000 players participated in the preliminary tournaments. Thanks to this competition, many schoolchildren start adopting serious attitude towards chess so that Belaya Ladya is unrivaled when it comes to promoting chess. A unique chess section has been opened in Sochi as part of the "Sirius" school for gifted children, supervised by former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik, with our best trainers sharing their knowledge with the students. We are happy to announce that the players of the Russian team to demonstrate the best score at Belaya Ladya, will be invited to study at Sirius.”
Mark Glukhovsky thanked the Elena and Gennady Timchenko Charitable Foundation, management of the Dagomys resort, the Russian Ministries of Sport and Education, and all other partners who assisted in organizing the pre-qualification stages of Belaya Ladya. “I reserve a special praise for the Russian Olympic Committee: our joint project "Chess for Children" takes care of supplying scholastic chess clubs with chess sets. Therefore, all Russian schools playing in this final will be granted chess sets and clocks”, said Mr Glukhovsky.
Mr Baradachev said, “The Elena and Gennady Timchenko Charitable Foundation happily supports this tournament, which grows more and more popular every year, and is attracting schools not only from all over Russia, but also from abroad. The main prize for the best Russian school remains same as was last year – an opportunity to play in the match against the strongest Chinese schoolchildren. The two previous matches took place in China – in Beijing and in Shanghai, and this year we decided to invite the Chinese to our Far East to conduct the match in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. The Timchenko Foundation also supports "Chess At Schools" program, propagating it in the Zabaykalsky Krai and the Pskov region jointly with RCF. Meanwhile, alongside with the "Belaya Ladya" final, the junior schoolchildren of these two Russian regions will hold a match between themselves."
Viktor Goncharov, Chief Arbiter of the tournament, carried out the drawing of lots procedure. A representative of the Armenian team, which triumphed in Dagomys in the last year's event, drew the white color. In addition to above described, Maria Andreeva and Anastasia Karaulova, students of Sergey Prokofiev Music School, offered a concert program to the participants of Belaya Ladya.
It's worth adding that the orphanage school representatives participate in the final for the second consecutive year. This time this is Specialized Boarding School #1 of Simferopol, which won the Ascension tournament among orphanage and boarding schools that took place in May at the premises of the Sochi hotel Zhemchuzhina. This was made possible owing to the RCF program aimed at providing chess education to parentless children.
As tradition has it, a broad cultural program is in store for children. Andrey Shumakov, the World Champion in Brain Ring, will be in charge of such trivia contests as "What, Where, When?", "Assorti", "Brain Ring." Young chess players are in for communication with the merited coach of the USSR Mark Dvoretsky (his first lecture was given on the day of round one and was met with great enthusiasm) and the senior Russian women's team coach Sergey Rublevsky. Meanwhile, table tennis, volleyball and football competitions will be organized in Dagomys for everyone who might be willing to give it a try.
Round one of Belaya Ladya was visited by Igor Levitin, Aide to the President of the Russian Federation. He read out the greetings telegram from Vladimir Putin and added afterwards for himself that he was pleased to be guest of junior chessplayers. "This year President has decided that the "Sirius" school for the gifted Russian children, which is located here in Sochi, will open doors to chess as well. Best young chess players will get an opportunity to receive education at this educational institution. You will be there together with our country's best hockey players, ice-skaters, and representatives of science and art.
For the first time in the history of Russian chess the World Chess Championship among schoolchildren is scheduled to take place in Sochi in December. I have no doubts that winners of Belaya Ladya are going to honorably represent our country at this competition.
Igor Levitin made the symbolic first move in the Belarus - Moldova match and wished great success to all participants of "Belaya Ladya".
