Thursday, September 20, 2007

RP to bid for Olympiad

The National Chess Federation of the Philippines has just announced that it will bid for the 2012 Olympiad. From the press release:

The Philippines will formally make a bid to host the 2012 World Chess Olympiad during the FIDE Congress next year. This was revealed by National Chess Federation of the Philippines (NCFP) president Prospero Pichay during the formal opening ceremonies of the sixth Asian Individual Chess Championship at the Cebu International Convention Center here Wednesday.

That would be pretty cool if RP is successful. To be honest, though, unless they can demonstrate some massive improvements between now and 2012, even I won't bet on RP scoring the gig. We're talking here about first acquiring the required skill set for 21st century tournament coverage. Did anyone see live game broadcast of the most recent big events in the Philippines? How about downloadable PGNs? Or bulletins?

To have an event as large and as prestigious as an Olympiad but sans the essential info that people have come to expect these days would be completely embarrassing. But anyway best wishes to Pichay and co. as they could be up against the ECF. If the NCFP has any advantage whatsoever, it will be that a trip to RP will be certainly cheaper!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope a country like the Phillipines gets the 2012 Chess Olympiad.
Anything but Kalmykia or the back blocks of the old Soviet Union.

Des Catolos said...

I can't see any problems that Pilipinas can't host such a large event in 2012. Filipinos are master of last minute improvements. You can bet on that.