‘Zugzwang’: Polish draughts official apologises after removing Russian flag
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A Polish draughts official apologised on Wednesday for causing outrage in Moscow by removing the Russian flag from a player’s table during a world title match, but said he’d had little choice.
Match official Jacek Pawlicki removed the flag as Russia’s Tamara Tansykkuzhina played Poland’s Natalia Sadowska in the Womens World Championship in Warsaw on Tuesday.
Tansykkuzhina, a six-time world champion, went on to lose what was the latest round of the final. Organisers said they had been told to remove the flag immediately by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) because Russians are barred under doping sanctions from competing under their national flag at major international events.
Pawlicki said he had apologised to Tansykkuzhina, but had little option but to remove the flag.
“There’s this position on the board called ‘zugzwang’ which means there’s no good move to make … and that’s what we had yesterday, a zugzwang,” he told Reuters.
“Maybe we should’ve turned off the cameras at that moment. We didn’t think of that. We were really under pressure and we were afraid.” In an emailed statement to Reuters, WADA said it had requested action over the flag on Tuesday after a request earlier in the championship went unheeded.