On Friday, the Dutch city of Wijk aan Zee will host the opening of a chess super tournament, in which 14 elite grandmasters of the planet will take part. Of particular interest to fans of the ancient game is the fact that for the first time in the last four months, Russian Vladimir Kramnik and Bulgarian Veselin Topalov come together at the board. The last time they sorted out relations last fall in a unification match, famous for its "toilet scandal."
Since then, the main events in the life of Vladimir Kramnik were by no means connected with chess: on New Year's Eve, he formalized relations with his fiancée, Marie-Lor Germont, a journalist from the French newspaper Figaro. Izvestia learned some of the details of their marriage.
“Everything related to marriage is deeply personal for Vladimir, so I don’t have much right to talk about this,” German world champion manager Karsten Hensel said in our conversation on Thursday. - Yes, in fact, the ceremony, held on December 30 in Paris, was essentially only bureaucratic in nature. Vladimir and Marie just came to the magistrate and in the presence of relatives put their signatures in the marriage registration book. Well, then we spent the evening at a family dinner. However, in February they planned a more solemn ceremony. Vladimir and his wife want to get married in the Orthodox Church. But where exactly they will do it is still unknown.
As for the tournament in Holland, apart from the participants in the Elistin match, the Indian Vishwanathan Anand and Levon Aronian from Armenia will surely be their main favorites. Russia will be represented in it by both the reigning world champion and his ex-second Peter Svidler, as well as Alexander Motylev.
Nevertheless, the greatest interest in Wijk aan Zee will cause rivalry between Kramnik and Topalov. After the recent scandalous accusations of the Bulgarian against the champion, manager Hensel filed a lawsuit with the FIDE Ethics Commission and threatened in an interview with Izvestia that his team would simply stop greeting Topalov. However, on Thursday in our conversation he was less emotional.
- The ethics committee will evaluate the actions of the Bulgarian grandmaster. And for us, the upcoming meeting at the tournament will not have any subtext. This will be the next match between two very strong chess players, ”the German said.