En Garde!

The Belfort saga continues. Courtesy of the ACF, this morning I got hold of Touze's response to FIDE's action against Jean-Paul Touze, organiser of the recent World Youths in Belfort, France. The text, in both English and French, are available here.

The translation is amusing reading - but you get the drift. In his letter, directly addressed to Ilyumzhinov, Touze accuses the FIDE president of ignominy, mystification, inciting to denounce, disinformation and censor and denying Touze the right to defend himself.

And in a separate statement, Monsieur Touze responds directly to complaints about the Belfort event. For example, many parents were apparently unimpressed with the food. To that Touze had this to say:

The quality of meals was very good and those that say they were sick should look to other causes. In France, for those who do not know, food service is surveyed very strictly by the sanitary services (we were controlled two times during the Championship).

Well, tell that to Mrs Oliver, pointperson for the Australian crew. She reported:

The salads were all dripping in mayonnaise or dressing and the only stuff that was fresh was the fruit. Fortunately they had huge quantities of this, so it served as a replacement. The quality of the meat and fish was very bad as well.

This in the centre of gastronomy? Sacre bleu! Note to Monsieur Touze: hire Alain Ducasse.

But what could really have been the root cause? In words perhaps only a Frenchman could produce, it all boiled down to "supplementary accompanying persons". Touze's conclusive remarks are worth quoting if only for their musicality.

All would have gone well if we could, as should always be the case, to look after the officially qualified and not to have to look after the supplementary accompanying persons. We didn’t do this, which was an error which should call into question that FIDE should take as a model the International Federations which are worthy of this name!

We esteem that our organisation can be called into fault in certain sectors which was essentially for two reasons:

• the consequence of the inflation of entries cause by the thoughtless decision of the FIDE to lower the prices at any price,
  
• that beyond the qualified players we also had to administer supplementary accompanying persons.
  

This should nevertheless not hide the sporting success of this Championship. FIDE has good Champions to which we wish brilliant careers and that is really what is essential!