Chess Put Forward To Join Paris 2024 Olympic Games

[NickFaulks]

I wonder if they will report failed drug tests this time?

Of course they will, once the statute of limitations is safely navigated.

[Brian Towers]

I'm sure we are all in awe of your prowess as a track athlete, but Kevin's question is still an important one in principle even if he may have been out by a second in the specifics. I do not know the answer and would like to.

So many things wrong in one short sentence. Where to start?

Kevin was out by a lot more than 1 second. My point was that 11 seconds for a schoolboy does NOT indicate prowess. Triple jump, by the way, is a field event not a track event.

According to the UKAD website -

Doping Control Personnel are authorised by UKAD to conduct testing in the UK. A pool of approximately 200 Blood Collection Officer (BCOs), Doping Control Officers (DCOs) and Chaperones are trained accredited to comply with the International Standards for Testing and Investigations (ISTI). DCOs in the UK are trained and accredited to notify and chaperone athletes, observe sample collection and process samples. UKAD's team of trained chaperones are authorised by the organisation to assist the DCOs in notifying and chaperoning athletes until they report to the doping control station.

That is 200 trained personnel to cover ALL sports subject to national doping control (more than 40 according to the UKAD website. The personnel and infrastructure are not there (nor is there much point) to conduct testing at more than internationals and national championships. UKAD's main focus is on education.

Anyway, the point is moot since chess won't be featuring at the Paris Olympics. Still, the 73 page cut&paste job from 2015 is up on the FIDE website just in case.

FIDE helpfully publish a list of drugs which they believe can enhance your chess. Worryingly the main effect of these drugs is to stop you falling asleep. None of them will improve your rook and pawn endings.

[NickFaulks]

FIDE helpfully publish a list of drugs which they believe can enhance your chess.

I have wondered about "Adderal and Ritalin are primarily prescribed for the treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder".

I'm sure many of us suffer to some extent from a wandering mind and suspect we might play chess better if our concentration could be improved. Should Ritalin be banned except for those officially diagnosed with ADHD?

It could be like anti-asthma drugs in cycling. Just because you haven't got asthma, that doesn't mean you wouldn't mind breathing a bit better.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

FIDE helpfully publish a list of drugs which they believe can enhance your chess.

I have wondered about "Adderal and Ritalin are primarily prescribed for the treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder".

I'm sure many of us suffer to some extent from a wandering mind and suspect we might play chess better if our concentration could be improved. Should Ritalin be banned except for those officially diagnosed with ADHD?

It could be like anti-asthma drugs in cycling. Just because you haven't got asthma, that doesn't mean you wouldn't mind breathing a bit better.

I like the ending of this article ('What are the Effects of Adderall if You Don’t Have ADHD?'):

https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/article/8g ... -have-adhd

If it's focus he's after, you could offer a lame but tried and true strategy: sleep. [...] knocking out—like, a proper seven to nine hours of sober sleep and not just a bout of drunken unconsciousness—not only keeps you alert and focused, it can improve complex learning.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Kevin was out by a lot more than 1 second."

Irrelevant - I was talking about the significant improvement, which is suspicious.

Ritalin might improve concentration, and side-effects would probably be less important in adults. (Haven't we discussed that here before?)

[Brian Towers]

Irrelevant - I was talking about the significant improvement, which is suspicious.

Nonsense!

As the father of 3 sons I can tell you that the 2 sporting ones showed very significant improvement during the few months of their pubertal growth spurts. In the case of the judoka this was anticipated by his coaches and he was put on a supervised weight training course during the period specifically to take advantage of the extra (natural) testosterone. Personally I improved my triple jump by about 3 feet during my growth spurt.

[Ian Thompson]

Irrelevant - I was talking about the significant improvement, which is suspicious.

Nonsense!

As the father of 3 sons I can tell you that the 2 sporting ones showed very significant improvement during the few months of their pubertal growth spurts.

Irrelevant when the comment was made about "adult male athletes".

[David Shepherd]

12 seconds for the 100m is not "moderate" for an adult male athlete. It is pathetic. When I was 16 I was Durham County schools champion in the triple jump and wondered if my 100m time of 11.0 seconds would also get me on the Durham team for 100m. Forget it. The two boys on the Durham team both had times of 10.9. At the English Schools championships they didn't even make the final.

Well I guess back in the 1960's the fastest 100m (on a cinder track) was about 8.6 seconds, but 12 seconds seems quick to me

[Kevin Thurlow]

Bridge drug shock...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/47420065

Chosen drugs are interesting. This might explain https://dopinglinkki.fi/en/info-bank/do ... clomiphene

[David Sedgwick]

Bridge drug shock...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/47420065

Chosen drugs are interesting. This might explain https://dopinglinkki.fi/en/info-bank/do ... clomiphene

This is being discussed at https://www.bridgewinners.com/article/v ... nblum-cup/.

[Roger de Coverly]

This is being discussed at

Comments as one might expect. For getting on for twenty years, the FIDE Medical Commission has done an admirable job in satisfying the letter of the law, if not the spirit. The only real wobble at a top level being having to find a "get out of jail" for Ivanchuk when he declined to be tested in Dresden in 2008.

But has the time come for the world authorities in Bridge and Chess to tell the IOC and WADA that enough is enough? If there's no prospect of being part of the Olympic games and every prospect of players being banned for infringing arbitrary rules about what medicines can be taken, that the verdict of tax authorities that neither is a sport is accepted and that WADA as a consequence is irrelevant. As a side effect, it might be possible for FIDE to overtake the IOC and perhaps FIFA for the maximum world membership.

[J T Melsom]

Has the tax evasion gone without comment in the bridge world?

[David Sedgwick]

Has the tax evasion gone without comment in the bridge world?

It seems so, but it's not new news. They were tried and convicted well over a year ago.

If there was any comment at the time, I missed it.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"This is being discussed at https://www.bridgewinners.com/article/v ... nblum-cup/"

Good to see the bridge forumites are critical of WADA too. I don't know if their website has improved but it was difficult to search in previous years, even for me, when I knew what I was looking for!

Note that a lot of things listed on the WADA list have serious side-effects, so it's best not to take them recreationally.

[JustinHorton]

"CCTV5+ covers 600 million people in China and according to our correspondent for this event Liang Ziming, this game was watched by 60 million people. That could well be a record for our sport!"

Ok, my brother-in-law was on Chinese TV when he lived there, so I know it is a bit strange

Chinese population is 1.4 billion or so I think, and there are 3,000 channels available; CCTV-5+ was launched in 2013 and is available in HDTV format; do we think that the claim that it reaches 600m (that number again) is likely to be true, and that 10% of them watched the chess?

There's no way of verifying information coming out of China (I'm not picking on the Chinese, by the way, I'd say the same about most places these days, including Russia, USA and the UK)

Anyway, I happened to be looking at Is Fraud A Brain Game? again this evening, as you do, and I couldn't help laughing at this:

Chinese Chess, which differs from the western form of the game, is probably the world’s most popular board game, being played by half the population of China.