Chess masters defy drug testing

1: Chess is not a sport 2: The Olympics are political 3: It's even more boring than golf

The article doesn't really explore all the issues. The Olympics celebrate PHYSICAL PROWESS. Chess does not, regardless how you want to twist mental stamina. However, certain drugs will affect one's mental stamina and the "sport" needs to address that. It would be safer to say what is allowed, like caffeine and nicotine, say, instead of listing what is not allowed.

1. whatever they recently did to this website that forces it to reload the page and remove your blog entry automatically needs to be rolled back. 2. steve: what qualities must an activity possess to be called a sport? 3. The notion that mental stamina is not directly linked to physical stamina is ridiculous. As a physically fit member of the cognitive elite, I can say from experience that the most physically challenging events I've ever encountered in my life have been prolonged bouts of concentration, be it over a chess board, in a 3-hour final exam, or a week-long technical training course. That said, I don't believe the olympics will give the chess world, and FIDE in particular, what it wants. One more high level chess tournament every four years won't raise chess awareness at all. This is a political ploy on the part of FIDE to try to make itself more relevant, and has nothing to do with making chess more relevant. If FIDE were to cease to exist tomorrow and there was no concept of a chess world champion, the game itself would live on, and be played at the highest levels, as it did in the days of Morphy.

one other thing: if the IOC chooses to make chess a sanctioned sport, then the same should be done for the special olympics.