The team landed 5 hours ago at Samarkand airport. Bengaluru: It’s not been a great start so far for the Samarkand Olympiad with national teams being stranded without rooms for hours together after landing in the Uzbek city. Indian Open team captain Srinath Narayanan wrote on X: “Having a terrible experience at the Olympiad. The team still haven’t been allotted hotel rooms, with absolutely no clarity on when it’ll be allotted.”
“We reached Samarkand around 10 in the morning after a long journey but only some of the players got their rooms by 3 pm, while few others were still waiting. Because they are placed that far away…” Singapore Chess Federation CEO Kevin Goh Wei Ming, wrote on X, some teams have to leave before 1 pm to play a 3pm game.
“37 hours awake, 2 flights, half way around the world only to be told, you don’t have a hotel room that night, typical Olympiad,” Jonathan Blackburn, Welsh team member, wrote on X. Those of us who got our rooms went straight to sleep since we were really exhausted,” an Indian team member told HT. It’s a terrible indictment of the local organisers that national teams should have to go through such an ordeal on the eve of the tournament. “Technical meeting done – pretty positive vibes and good spirit. Although this is also the place where you hear the most appalling stories about teams being placed in dormitories with shared toilets. Some rooms have no internet. Clearly, there were some organisational lapses.
