Monday
May032010
Former FIDE President Florencio Campomanes Dies at 83
Monday, May 3, 2010 at 3:20PM
Florencio Campomanes (1927-2010), President of FIDE from 1982 to 1995, passed away earlier today from cancer. He was a controversial figure, taking heavy criticism for the cancellation of the first, marathon Karpov-Kasparov match, and it was on his watch and in protest against his administration that Kasparov and Short broke from FIDE with their 1993 title match. But others, like Spassky, have praised his leadership, and FIDE's outreach to non-traditional chess countries grew while he was in office.
tagged Campomanes
Reader Comments (2)
Indeed, I would like to see what Kasparov has to say about him. In his book about his first two matches with Karpov, Kasparov tries his very best to pretend he was the victim of an infamous plan thought up (or at least executed) by the late FIDE president to save Karpov. Perhaps he's right, but nevertheless, old enmity tends to be easily forgotten by death.
Seena,
It would be interesting to see Kasparov's reaction now. Especially as Kasparov and Karpov are now apparently good friends with Kasparov very supportive of Karpov ascending to the Campomanes "throne".
It never did really ring true to me that Campomanes did what he did to support Karpov. It might have ended up in Karpov's favor, but I don't think it's credible to assume there was coordination with Karpov or even really bias against Kasparov.