Great wall

China have won the Olympiad in Tromsø. I believe that we can now look forward to a sustained Chinese dominance in international team events, reminiscent of the Soviets. The Chinese take sporting success very seriously and in China international competitive chess is most definitely regarded as a sport, with all the benefits in state backing which that implies. China finished with 19 out of 22 possible, while Hungary, India, Russia and Azerbaijan followed at a respectable 2 points distance.
 
In the other bitter contest at Tromsø, the former world champion Garry Kasparov failed to unseat the incumbent, the eccentric billionaire and self-avowed alien abductee Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, in the battle for the World Chess Federation presidency. Undoubtedly Kasparov would have been better for elite chess development, but the many modestly sized national bodies which mainly constitute the electorate are, by and large, not overly stuffed with grandmasters.
 
World champion Magnus Carlsen scored 6/9 for Norway — a total which included a couple of unexpected losses.