Word: kalmykia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...story of Ilyumzhinov's rise to power reads like a James Bond movie scripted by Vladimir Nabokov. Like many other chess players, Ilyumzhinov was a prodigy. At 9 he was the chess champion of his native Kalmykia, a tiny, impoverished Russian republic populated by the descendants of Genghis Khan. But his talents went beyond pushing pawns. In his 20s he made millions running a string of banks in the early wildcat years of post-Soviet Russian capitalism. At the tender age of 31 the dapper Ilyumzhinov (he has a fondness for white capes and vintage Rolls-Royces) was elected President...
Ilyumzhinov also launched a campaign to make chess an Olympic sport, a process that will involve, as per International Olympic Committee regulations, mandatory drug testing. In Kalmykia's capital city of Elista, he erected a $30 million chess coliseum called Chess City, a bizarre extravagance in a place where hot water is still a luxury. Last spring he staged a fashion show featuring flirty chess uniforms modeled by Alexandra Kosteniuk, a curvaceous grandmaster who may be the chess world's answer to Anna Kournikova. Kosteniuk then proceeded to play eight simultaneous matches. On Rollerblades...
| 1 |