‘Abused’ Canada GM quits Worlds
Anton Kovalyov, a Canadian Chess Grandmaster with an ELO rating of 2649, had lit up the 2017 Chess World Cup in Tbilisi, Georgia with a massive upset. In the second round, he defeated five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand 1.5-0.5 to knock the Indian Grandmaster out of the tournament. What should have been his glory moment has instead turned sour because of shorts.
Just before the start of his third round clash with Israeli Grandmaster Maxim Rodshtein, Kovalyov was approached by the chief arbiter Tomasz Delega and asked him to change his shorts. The Canadian Grandmaster said that he had played his previous two matches with shortswithout any objection. Delega stated that this was not complying with the tournament’s dress code. Looking at the situation, the chief organiser of the Chess World Cup, Zurab Azmaiparashvili intervened. What followed was ugly. According to a Facebook post done by Kovalyov on his timeline, Azmaiparashvili rudely yelled at him and shouted, “You are a Gypsy”. He went on to say that FIDE would punish him. When Kovalyov asked why was Azmaiparashvilli rude, the chief organiser again shouted, “Because you are a Gypsy.”
Kovalyov stressed in his post, “I didn’t take any pants with me because I gained some weight and they were to(o) tight. If the organization of the tournament would have warned me sooner, I would have taken a cab to the mall and bought pants, without any problems .