On Chess: Royal game worthy of term ‘sport’
Saturday, February 27, 2010 2:54 AM
In 2006, the 15th Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, included chess among the 40 official medal sports.
How is this so when the visual appeal of a chess contest often seems a notch or two below that of grass growing?
The physical demands of the five- or six-hour battle that constitutes a chess game were revealed most dramatically when Danish grandmaster Bent Larsen and Russia’s Mark Taimanov were treated for high blood pressure after catastrophic losses to Bobby Fischer during his 1971-72 run to the world title.
Offering testimony to the sporting nature of chess is dadaist artist and international celebrity Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), who had hoped to find a gentle art form when he turned to the game for refuge from the growing commercialism of the art world.
But decades of play and study, including stints on the French Olympic chess team, taught Duchamp that the aesthetics in chess were trumped by its essentially competitive, sporting nature.
He concluded that “Chess is a sport. A violent sport. This detracts from its most artistic connections. If it is anything, it is a struggle.”
We are reminded of Fischer’s observation: “Your body has to be in top condition. Your chess deteriorates as your body does. You can’t separate body from mind.”
Source: http://www.dispatch.com
Of course chess is a sport.