Magnis Carlsen criticises FIDE officials after ‘Jeangate’ fiasco at World Rapid & Blitz Championship 2024
Magnis Carlsen criticises FIDE officials after ‘Jeangate’ fiasco at World Rapid & Blitz Championship 2024
Defending champion Magnus Carlsen criticised the FIDE officials following the ‘Jeangate’ fiasco during the World Rapid and Blitz Championship 2024, in New York, last week.
Carlsen was ousted for not following the FIDE dress code for the event. The Norwegian was fined $200 for wearing jeans before Chief Arbiter Alex Holowczak unpaired him from the subsequent rounds for repeated violations.
However, Carlsen feels the turn of events could’ve been different had the officials handled it properly. “I think the situation was badly mishandled on their side. And I was about to basically book my plane tickets and get out of here. My father said that we should maybe wait until the morning to make a decision to speak to the FIDE president, Arkady Dvorkovich, whom we have a good relationship with,” said Carlsen to Take Take Take, a chess-based social media application he launched earlier this year.
“We know that we can reason with him. I think him actually being asleep when this thing went down meant that there were no grown-ups in FIDE. You can argue whether I am or not, but that’s… We felt that there was nobody even slightly willing to have a conversation or anything,” he added.
Earlier this week, five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand said FIDE didn’t want to disqualify Carlsen, but the Norwegian left them with no choice after refusing to follow the rules. “He simply refused to follow the rules, left us with little choice. Today this decision seemed emotional. Magnus was not willing to compromise,” Anand, the deputy president of chess’ global governing body, told Chessbase India.
“We had long conversations with Anand yesterday and others, which generally didn’t lead anywhere,” Carlsen said.
“So I’m not even sure I broke any rules. But anyways, they decided to take that opportunity to pursue a very narrow interpretation of a rule. Apparently, there was no room for discussions or anything,” Carlsen continued.
“Anand said very clearly that he didn’t know that he had any opportunity to do anything past, you know, go with the arbiters’ honestly draconian decision of not pairing me. And that means that he was, for all his good qualities, not ready for this job. That’s what I feel.” Carlsen had opted out of the Blitz section after his disqualification but will now defend his title.
