Chess master storms out of match in ‘gipsy’ shorts row

THE World Cup of chess has been engulfed in a race row after a grandmaster claimed he was told he could not wear shorts because he “looked like a gipsy”.

Anton Kovalyov, of Canada, stormed out of the $1.6million event minutes before his third round match yesterday.

Kovalyov, 25, had turned up wearing the same stripy shorts he wore in the previous round when he knocked out Viswanathan Anand, India’s former world champion.

But 15 minutes before the start of play, Kovalyov was accused of breaking the dress code imposed by the game’s world governing body Fide, and ordered to change into long trousers.

Kovalyov refused, saying he did not have any, before Zurab Azmaiparashvili, Fide Vice-president and head of the European Chess Union, intervened. It ended with Kovalyov storming out, forfeiting his match with Maxim Rodshtein of Israel, claiming he was racially abused, “bullied” and “treated like garbage”.

Ukrainian-born Kovalyov said: “The issue was not the shorts but how I was treated. I came to the game and was approached by the arbiter asking me to change (first time). I told him that I don’t have pants with me. Then came Zurab, he was very aggressive, yelling at me and using the racial slur ‘gipsy’ to insult me, apart from mentioning several times that I will be punished by Fide.

“I told him that I had asked before at the previous world cup if what I was wearing was OK and I was told ‘Yes’ by somebody from the organisation. Zurab, in a prepotent way, said he doesn’t care, he’s the organiser now.

“I asked him why he was so rude to me, and he said because I’m a gipsy.”

In an interview in the Russian media, Mr Azmaiparashvili tried to defend his comments by saying “gipsy” was meant in the sense of “vagabond”.

He said: “We in Georgia have an expression: ‘dressed like a tramp’. Do not fool around, everyone understands what I mean.”