Havana/Carlos Rivero, president of the Cuban Chess Federation and head of the commission of this sport, was absent from the National Championship held this week in Ciego de Ávila to travel to Russia. The manager, who has been moving the threads of Cuban chess for more than ten years, arrived on Moscow on Monday with the island’s children’s delegation for the Intellect Academy Cup, an event that sponsors the Kremlin.
The absence of the highest authority of Cuban chess in its most important contest is serious, and gives the measure of mediocrity in which the championship has plunged. Only a notable player – Carlos Daniel Albornoz – has come to the tournament, in which the most relevant national trebejistas have declined to participate, including the current national champion, Luis Ernesto Quesada.
Taking into account that the contest goes this Tuesday because of its seventh round – nine – it is unlikely that Rivero is back in Cuba to strengthen the hand of the new champion and conclude the competition.
Taking into account that the contest goes this Tuesday because of its seventh round, it is unlikely that Rivero is back in Cuba to shake the hand of the new champion
The Intellect Academy Cup is celebrated this year in the Russian city of Novokuznetsk and five Cuban children will participate in it. At the head, the 14 -year -old Camagüeyan prodigy Felipe Herrera Benítez, in addition to Hanoy Fernández (10 years, Havana), Ryan Molina (8, Matanzas), Samuel González (8, Sancti Spíritus) and Mya Valdés (8, Matanzas) . Together with Rivero, who presides over the delegation, goes Master Bárbara López-Chávez.
The Telegram channel of the event published photos of the arrival of the Cubans to the SHREMETEVO airport in Moscow, where the organizers of the event dressed them with appropriate coats and boots for the cold of the Euroasy country. The island’s uniform was a single click with national colors.
The island’s delegation arrived in the Russian capital with the Ecuadorian and the Venezuelan. The Caracas team, in fact, received its training for the contest in Havana, according to the Venezuelan Chess Federationwhich published photos of children at the University of Physical Culture Sciences Manuel Fajardo.
In a discreet profile and accustomed to the double role of accompanying and monitoring the Cuban elite chess players – as the former sports cadres of the Soviet Union did – Rivero is a frequent host in large international events. As a manager, he witnessed and in many cases caused the rupture of the best national players with the ruling party.
A photo of its social networks, in 2015, gives the measure of the collapse that has suffered the chess of the island – under its management – in the last decade. Together with Rivero, in the team world championship, they pose teachers such as Leinier Domínguez, Lázaro Bruz and Yuniesky Quesada, all playing then with the Cuban flag.
A few years after that photograph, Rivero would assume the status of inquisitor of Cuban chess: in just a decade it has been the figure that numerous champions have indicated as a totally loyal manager to the regime who cares little about the future of the science game in his country.
One of his most insistent detractors has been Bruzón, whom Rivero has described a few occasions as a “lack of respect” to sports authorities. The official had invited the players emigrated to the National Championship of 2024 to whom they wanted, provided they had not offended the regime and left the foreign federations for which they played.
No one responded to the invitation, but Bruzón – the only one expressly excluded – publicly responded to his former commissioner who was the government who was respecting the Cuban people, whom he had sunk in misery.
In 2018, in a controversial radial intervention regarding the departure of the country of Bruzzo and Domínguez, Rivero – a more conciliatory then – said that he, personally, “wanted a lot” to Bruz, but that the Cuban chess regulations forced him veto your participation in any Cuban event. “He violated his contract, he committed indiscipline,” he said.
About Dominguez, Rivero said, they gave him a “sabbatical year” after which the teacher did not want to participate in a tournament. “They left with ordinary passport, they did not deserted or abandoned the Cuban delegation. At least officially, ”he said.
Another clash in which Rivero showed a hard hand was before the claims of Master Roberto Pantoja, who protested against the non -employed’s non -payment to his players. Given the impossibility of resolving the conflict, Pantoja requested his separation from the entity.
Rivero’s disagreements with their champions have not finished. At a press conference on the current National Championship, he expressed his discomfort about the absences of the chess elite that remained in Cuba. “Only Omar Almeida had communicated his will not to participate, and prepare for next year,” he lamented. “Those problems (those of Ernesto Miranda and the champion Luis Ernesto Quesada) were unknown to the Federation.”
