The 36th Chess Olympiad was held in Calvia, Mallorca, from 14-30 October 2004. Calvia is a small region on the southwest tip of the island that includes a scattering of holiday places. We (the English team) stayed in the town of Magaluf, a popular tourist resort for English holidaymakers, many of whom are attracted by the beaches, the sun, cheap alcohol and the fact that you can order a full English breakfast at any hour of day or night while watching your favourite soap or the latest Premiership football match on Sky TV. In fact, by the time the Olympiad started the holiday season was just about coming to an end, so ‘the town that never sleeps’ was much quieter than normal. However, despite the fact that we were well into October, temperatures soared and there were some incredibly humid days, some players escaped the heat by taking well-earned dips in the sea.

Moving onto more important things, like how the team (Harriet Hunt, Jovanka Houska, Heather Richards and Melanie Buckley) actually fared: well I’m delighted to report that they can be extremely proud of their performance. We scored 25 points from 42 games, placing us joint sixth in the final standings (eighth on tie-break). For a team only seeded 27th this really is a great achievement (we received medals for being the top team in our ‘category’). What really impressed me the most was the fighting spirit shown by all four players. Despite the fact that an Olympiad can be an overly long, emotionally draining and tiring event, there were virtually no quick draws and often our match was one of the final ones to finish. The team played aggressively and were also not afraid of trying new openings, a useful ploy when opponents are heavily prepared by studying previous encounters.

This was Melanie’s debut for England at a Chess Olympiad, and she can be more than happy with her score of 3/5. Melanie played a major role in one of the turning points of the event when in round eleven she managed with grim determination to overturn a completely lost position into a winning one, thus giving us a 3-0 win over Mongolia – an emphatic victory that catapulted us right up the standings.

Heather played many opponents rated quite a bit higher than her, so despite scoring less than 50%, she still gained rating points and can be pleased with her efforts. She suffered heartache in the penultimate round against Hungary when, after outplaying her distinguished opponent to reach a winning position, she was horribly swindled. However, it was impressive the way she recovered in the final round against India to draw an eventful game as Black, again against someone rated nearly 200 points higher than her. With Harriet winning and Jovanka drawing, we managed to achieve a 2-1 win over the sixth seeds; despite the fact that we had heavier wins, given the strength of the opposition this was probably our best result of the tournament.

Jovanka played excellently to score 8/13 and record her second International Master norm (over the first eleven rounds). Actually, it could be argued that her general play deserved an even greater score (on more than one occasion she outplayed her opponent before letting her sneak off with a draw). It’s a mark of her professionalism and determination that despite her achievements, she was still not totally satisfied at the end of the tournament.

Harriet started the tournament off well and then things just got better and better. Her final score was a very impressive 9½/13 with a mammoth rating performance of 2558 (the only top boards to better this were former world champions Susan Polgar and Xie Jun). Added to this, she also scored individual wins over the former European Women’s Champion, Almira Skripchenko, and the reigning Commonwealth Champion (and former British Champion!), Humpy Koneru of India. If they were giving out medals for performances with the white pieces, Harriet’s perfect 6/6 would surely have got the gold medal (Jovanka complemented Harriet by being particularly effective with Black).
Personally speaking, it was simply very nice to be able to study chess for a solid 17 days. It was fun and very rewarding. It was also quite hard work, but of course nowhere near as hard as actually having to go out and play the games!

Finally, on behalf of everyone I would like to say a big ‘thank you’ to Deloitte and to everyone else that have sponsored and supported the team for this event, and special thanks go to Allan Beardsworth for all his efforts in this direction.

Womens Olympiad: Final Standings

1	China	31 out of 42
2	USA	28
3	Russia	27.5
4	Georgia	27.5
5	France	25.5
6	Hungary	25
7	Slovakia	25
8	ENGLAND	25
9	India	24.5
10	Poland	24.5
11	Armenia	24.5
12	Netherlands	24.5
13	Lithuania	24
14	Bulgaria	24
15	Sweden	24
16	Serbia & Montenegro	24
17	Germany	24
18	Ukraine	23.5
19	Slovenia	23.5
20	Romania	23.5
21	Vietnam	23.5
(87 teams)

England’s Individual Scores

Games

White: Jovanka Houska
Black: Chrissy Lynn Oquendo Serrano
Women’s Olympiad, Calvia (Round 1)

White: Humpy Koneru
Black: Harriet Hunt
Women’s Olympiad, Calvia (Round 14)