Indian team left stranded for hours without hotel rooms

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 landed 5 hours ago at Samarkand airport. The team still haven’t been allotted hotel rooms, with absolutely no clarity on when it’ll be allotted.”

“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.

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. Some teams have to leave before 1 pm to play a 3pm game because they are placed that far away…” Singapore Chess Federation CEO Kevin Goh Wei Ming, wrote on X.

“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. Clearly, there were some organisational lapses. Those of us who got our rooms went straight to sleep since we were really exhausted,” an Indian team member told HT.

While the Indian players were allotted rooms after a long wait, coaches are forced to share rooms, till individual rooms are arranged, HT has learnt.

Incidentally, in the opening press conference on Tuesday, when Uzbek star and world No.7 Nodirbek Abdusattorov was asked about his most memorable Olympiad experience, he singled out the 2022 Chennai Olympiad for praise.

“I think conditions are incredibly important for players. When you have good accommodation and food it directly impacts your confidence, mood and results. I think we were very lucky in 2022 in Chennai because our hotel was amazing, we had access to the beach and had an amazing time. So, that ultimately too was part of our success.” Uzbekistan won the gold medal in the Open section in that edition.