Ukrainian Team Press Conference
The most significant result of the 4th round in the Open section undoubtedly was the victory of the Ukrainian team over the top seeds, Russia, by 2.5-1.5. Grandmasters Ruslan Ponomariov (a former FIDE World Champion, who beat Tomashevsky) and Pavel Eljanov (who drew with former World Champion Kramnik) – the last two games of the match to finish – joined Susan Polgar for a press conference.
- Congratulations to both of you! GM Ponomariov is the hero of the day, winning his game against Tomashevsky; please tell us about it, how did it proceed?
RP: I played with the black pieces, and in general it was quite a solid opening. I don’t really think I played precisely; if you look at the game you will notice I wasted some tempi making several moves with my knight. I think White kept some pressure, some space advantage. Nothing really special happened, just it was a little bit stressful game because the match was quite important – it is still the 4th round, but already the strongest teams started to play against each other. Under this pressure my opponent just blundered a pawn, I took it and that was it!
- Pavel, how was your game? I saw you were applying pressure throughout the game against Vladimir Kramnik…
PE: I was pushing and was better all the time, but I didn’t see how to break through at any point, so… OK, maybe at some point I may have been winning, I had various options how to try and break through, with g5-g6, h5-h6, but there was no reason to take risks because I saw Ruslan was winning, so I just offered a draw at the end. It’s hard to say right now; from a practical point of view it is hard to win this position, maybe objectively it is winning, but I cannot be sure.
- Prior to the match, what was the team expectation, your goal?
RP: We just decided to play as good as we can, and that’s all. I think we were quite happy to be paired with the Russian team early in the tournament; we thought, the earlier the better for us. Last year, at the World Team Championship, we played Russia in the first round and thanks to Pavel, who beat Evgeny Tomashevsky then, we won that match by 2.5-1.5.
- How much did you prepare for the Olympiad before you came here? Did you have training camps with the whole team?
RP: Well, we had some small training camp in Kiev, but nothing really special, just to see each other, talk a little about chess… Also I became a father some two months ago, so it was a little bit hard for me to concentrate and to train at home; that’s why I decided to go to Kiev, to stay with the team and train a little bit.
- Seems like it worked out well! Some questions from the media…
A few words about the absence of Vassily (Ivanchuk), who decided to play a draughts tournament?
PE: Well, you know about Vassily, what he is thinking, what his plans are, he’s such an unpredictable man… This time he decided to play in a different tournament, in a different board game… Maybe he felt he is not prepared well enough to play here, hard to say…
RP: I would like to add that Vassily is undoubtedly a great chess player and has dedicated a lot of his time playing for the Ukrainian team; he even played during the Soviet era for the national team. So we cannot blame him for deciding to rest for one Olympiad. In general, it is a problem for our team that we always have the same players, we don’t really have a new generation of players. If you check the statistics of the World Junior and Youth Championships, we don’t really have any promising stars, we don’t win medals… So this is a big problem. Right now everyone in the Ukrainian team is becoming more and more experienced (laughs), but it would be nice if we also had some fresh blood. Andrei Volokitin could be considered as “fresh blood”, but he actually already played in the Calvia Olympiad in 2004, when we became Olympic champions. It’s a big problem and I don’t know how things can change; right now we try to do our best and play with the options that we have.
- Is there any support for top chess players from the government in Ukraine?
RP: Well, you know that there are problems with Russia right now, Ukraine is in a tough situation and it’s not a top priority to support sports at the moment; you can also check the Olympic Games in Brazil, which recently finished, where Ukraine won less medals than in previous Olympics. Okay, there is some support, but not enough… Just to keep some sport activities from disappearing.
PE: I would like to add that we didn’t have support from the government before – we did have some, but not enough; it’s not only now, when there are problems.
- Thank you very much and good luck in the remainder of the Olympiad!
