2024-09-25 12:50:24
It is no coincidence that today we will talk about our achievements and omissions in the field of chess in 2011-2013. The point is that exactly 50 years ago, on May 20, one of our greatest athletes, Tigran Petrosyan, was declared world champion. With these words today the President of RA, Chairman of the Chess Federation, Serzh Sargsyan, started the report-election conference of the Federation.
“Today we are current champions. Our boys made us proud. It is thanks to our boys that every Armenian today considers himself a chess champion,” said Serzh Sargsyan and expressed hope that one day we will be equally proud of the girls’ chess team.
2011-2013 Among the achievements during the period, the country’s president singled out three: winning the title of world champion of our team in China in 2011, then becoming the champion of the Olympics in Turkey and the fact that we are still current champions.
In order to summarize the work done in the past two years, Serzh Sargsyan invited the first deputy president of the Chess Federation, Smbat Lputyan, to the podium.
Apart from the victories of the boys’ team, the latter considered chess becoming a compulsory subject in secondary schools an important achievement.
“We became the first country in which chess was taught in public schools. We have already managed to train 1900 chess teachers. A special department has also been opened at the Pedagogical University to train specialists in this field,” said Smbat Lputyan.
According to the informant of the president of the Chess Federation, chess is becoming quite popular in marzes as well.
“All marzes are becoming active. At the moment, the leader in terms of victories is undoubtedly Shirak, and before Shirak, Lori was in first place,” said Smbat Lputyan.
President Serzh Sargsyan interrupted Lputyan for a moment, saying that he did not mention this achievement on purpose.
“This is exactly the third achievement I missed on purpose. This is a process equivalent to the feats of the boys,” he said.
It should be noted that the newly appointed Minister of Sports and Youth of the Republic of Armenia Yuri Vardanyan also participated in the conference.