Arianne Watch

In my inbox last night was an hastily written email from WIM Arianne Caoili. In response to an article written by Fiona Hudson (for Sydney's Daily Telegraph) Arianne said that her comments regarding Lev Aronian were "taken completely out of context". Arianne goes on to say that "the media are making things up".

In fact, Arianne has now updated her finger notes on the Internet Chess Club. The 10th line reads: "media low-lifes are misquoting constantly, telling lies and making up all sorts of things out of context. enough already, it is embarassing for everyone involved."

However, the woman international master did indicate that this piece by Roberta Mancuso was "THE CORRECT STORY" (yes, she wrote it in caps).

Also, the Times of London has a follow-up on their first Arianne story. In today's issue, Arianne says that she prefers to be known as the Sharapova of Chess and not the Kournikova of Chess.

The Times claims that they broke the story about the punching incident. If by "breaking the story" we mean "first mention" then doesn't that mean this post? There was also this by the Irish women's team captain, Mark Orr.

OK, there were no names, so how about the round 12 report by John Saunders of the British Chess Magazine which we later acknowledged here?

But to be absolutely exact, the first we heard about the incident (names included) albeit to a limited number of subscribers, was via the Australian Team email from Turin. No, The Times did not break the story.

A full transcript of the interview between Arianne Caoili and The Times is available here (where the howler that Arianne is Australia's number 3 is repeated).