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The Start of Belaya Ladya in Dagomys in the review of Vladimir Barsky
It is the fourth time in a row that the Belaya Ladya final takes place in the health center "Dagomys" and is on a sure track to become even healthier, with its lineup growing ever stronger and more representative. The 2017 event final lists 80 regions of Russia and as many as 17 world countries represented by: Armenia, Belarus, Israel, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Moldavia, Mongolia, and Estonia. These “old-timers” have been added by seven first-timers from England, Bulgaria, Greece, India, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. The festive opening held in the concert hall "Balkans" saw each guest team welcomed with applause.
However, the children started with a traditional warm-up activities out-of-doors and in the hall. They were greeted by various cartoon and movie characters acting at the platform in front of the hall entrance. Your correspondent has to admit about having failed to identify a significant part of the characters, whereas the children were very well aware about who was who and what to expect of these heroes. The hall had artists making face-painting for all those who were willing to wear it, coupled with (a novelty!) drawing some hand tattoos made up of chess piece images. A wild delight was caused by the show of soap bubbles - it turns out that they can even make for a headdress (although not an especially viable one).
After that, children shifted to the concert hall together with their coaches and parents. The tournament director Alexander Tkachev read out a welcome letter from the President of Russia Vladimir Putin addressed to the participants and guests:
Dear friends!
I welcome you to the final of Belaya Ladya.
You have achieved success and proven your leading positions through challenging qualification and regional stages of the competition. Today, Sochi has gathered top school teams from all over the country.
It is good to see this tournament continuing to develop and attract more participants with each year to come. I see it as a clear sign of succession to our legendary national chess school traditions.
I am confident that Belaya Ladya will continue contributing largely to supporting young talent and giving them chance to hone their skills. Likewise, it will help spread the popularity of chess among young people.
Let our participants enjoy many interesting exciting games and our guests - pleasant and friendly atmosphere of communication and the most kind of impressions.
V. Putin
The organizers of Belaya Ladya are the Russian Chess Federation and Ministry of Sport of the Russian Federation. The competition is also supported by Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the Elena and Gennady Timchenko Charitable Foundation, Renault Russia, the Federal Grid Company of Unified Energy System (FGC UES), and PhosAgro.
RCF Executive Director Mark Glukhovsky and Deputy General Director of the Timchenko Charity Fund Igor Baradachev wished that children not only successfully compete in the tournament, but also spend their free time to advantage via relaxing, sunbathing, making new friends. Thanks to the co-support from the Elena and Gennady Timchenko Charitable Foundation and Renault Russia, the best Russian team will travel to France in October this year: our children will play a match against their French peers and pay a visit to one of the Renault factories. Meanwhile, the best foreign team will receive an invitation to come to Russia yet another time to perform in a major international tournament.
A concert program with the works of Vivaldi, Beethoven, Chopin, and Rachmaninoff was given by teachers and students of the Gnessins Music School.
It's worth adding that the orphanage school representatives participate in the Belaya Ladya final for the third consecutive year. This time this is a Boarding school of Luga, which won the Ascension tournament among orphanage and boarding schools taking place in March at the premises of the clinical sanatorium and health resort complex "AquaLoo”. Participation of this team became possible owing to the RCF program aimed at providing chess education to parentless children.
Running parallel to Belaya Ladya will be a final competition of the Chess in Schools project, which is conducted by the Russian Chess Federation together with the Elena and Gennady Timchenko Charitable Foundation. Six teams from Pskov Oblast, Novosibirsk Oblast, Zabaykalsky Krai, Altai Krai, Krasnodar Krai, and Ingushetia will take part in it. Dagomys will also hold a round table meeting devoted to the problems of school chess education. Igor Baradachev shared that three more regions would join the project in September 2017, and invited all those who wish to participate in the contest to apply after June 5.
As tradition has it, children will enjoy an extensive cultural and entertainment program. Andrey Shumakov, the World Champion in Brain Ring, will be in charge of such trivia contests as "What, Where, When?", "Assorti", "Brain Ring." Personal communication with famous coaches and grandmasters is in store for young players. Anyone willing may join table tennis, volleyball and football contests to be held In Dagomys as well.
Given below is a small album where you can see a few pictures. To download a picture that is of interest to you, position the cursor right over its middle (a handle-shaped cursor turns into an arrow-shaped one), then right-click and select "save image as". I wish you a pleasant viewing!
Pictures by Vladimir Barsky
