The Windsor Star Windsor, Ontario, Canada Wednesday, April 19, 1972 - Page 37
A Problem of Some Size
IF THE SOVIETS and Americans can't agree on how to hold a chess match for money, how are the Soviets and Canadians going to manage it in hockey?
There is an interesting parallel here because in both cases the Western capitalistic system is trying to call the tune at the expense of Communist ambition.
Insofar as I am able to determine, the Russians do not care to finish second in Vietnam, chess, outer space, hockey or anything else worth a mouthful of propaganda.
That being the case, I am persuaded that good old Canada may stand to lose more than she can gain, a lesson we might learn from the Americans, although Russian interest in Canada is presently held down to the dull roar of wheat, Arctic icebreakers, ice hockey and our hostility to the influences of American economics.
The Russians have held the world championship of chess since 1948—from Mikhail Botvinnik to Vassily Smyslov, to Botvinnik again, to Mikhail Tal, to Botvinnik again, to Tigran Petrosian and thence to Boris Spassky, current titleholder who rose to the purple in 1969.
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EVERYBODY in Russia plays chess. I know you hear that everybody in Russia plays hockey, but bear in mind that there are a lot of fast guys with a bishop who were pushing pawns long before the state begin to build hockey rinks in earnest.
Chess is a game so old nobody knows when it got started or where. Kings and generals have been known to be fooling around with it from the time there were kings and generals.
Chess experts say that Russian grandmasters are no better than American grandmasters such as Bobby Fischer, but that there are a whole lot more of them.
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RECORDS SHOW that Fischer is the equal of anybody. By his own admission, he is better. He talks like Cassius Clay.
Ten years ago, Fischer took a beating in the Candidates' Tournament which is the final exam to get a shot at the world champion. At the time, he said he would have nothing further to do with the International Chess Federation unless they changed the rules. He accused the Russians of a Communist plot hatched in Moscow.
The Russians didn't need a plot. All they needed was to load the tournaments with Russian grandmasters. The consensus of chess/and was that no one outside Russia, no matter how brilliant, stood a chance.
So they changed the rules, yielding in effect to Fischer's demands. They went from round robin tournaments to head-to-head matches in qualifying trials.
This was Fischer's meat and he made the most of it. He blew a succession of finalists including Petrosian right off the board to become the first United States player ever to reach the challenging podium. That was last October.
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SO NOW FISCHER, Brooklyn capitalist to the core, wants to make a killing in the market places. The Russians backed their man, Spassky with a $35,000 guarantee, which is certainly worth noting for a nation that chokes on the word professional.
That's Russian state money. Fischer had to get his guarantee from the American Chess Federation. They didn't come up with it. The moral is what amateur organization in a capitalistic society can match dollars with a state-run Communist program?
The answer in Canada, and in hockey, is another state-run program — Hockey Canada, the federal government.
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BUT THAT IS where the picture gets sticky. The United States government is not about to back Fischer any more than it backed its hockey team in the recent Olympic Games at Sapporo. Japan.
The Canadian government, however, is up to its ears in complaints over loss of international hockey prestige and massive defection of Canada's best players to the United States.
What to do? Well, a peculiar marriage has occurred between the Canadian government and the National Hockey League, terms of which are far from solemnized. It is so complicated with outright professionalism and Canadian-American entente, it should have been placed on the agenda with the auto pact when Richard Nixon was in Ottawa.
A series of hockey games between Russia and NHL mercenaries in the employ of the Canadian government is proposed. Now, I know what the Russians are trying to prove, but what are we trying to prove?
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IF THIS MATCH is for the championship of the universe, and you can expect the television people will be persuaded it is; and the rink owners will be persuaded it is; who is going to pay the contracts that will be demanded by chaps such as Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito and Bobby Hull?
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I'M NOT SAYING Hockey Canada is too cheap to do it although to this point they have been strictly amateurs talking about the business world.
In Europe, outside the Iron Curtain, there are countries that spend enormous sums of money to promote athletics. And it can be noted they sometimes become involved with the hire of club professionals in elaborate arrangements.
An elaborate arrangement would not be understatement for Canada to hire top hockey pros to tackle Russia.
