AThe Ottawa Journal Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Saturday, June 24, 1972 - Page 6
Bear and Eagle
Next month Bobby Fischer sits down with Boris Spassky to settle the question of whether an American can prove himself the world's best chess player by defeating a Russian world champion. Fischer is in a situation something like David going forth to meet Goliath: he can't look too bad if he loses, but can reap even more fame if he wins.
Fischer is reputed by some — including, it seems, the Russians — to be the first serious challenger to Soviet chess supremacy in a quarter century. Soviet grandmasters such as Botvinnik, Tal and Petrosian have traded the world chess championship back and forth among themselves since 1948. Spassky won the championship in 1969.
Chess' mind-blowing complexities have won it countless devotees around the world, and they will follow move-by-move the Spassky-Fischer matches, to be held in Reykjavik.
The rugged Spassky trains at the chess board, and at tennis, skiing, swimming and running. He compares himself to the Russian bear, and his game is bear-like: deceptively lethargic in starting, but powerful in later play.
In the young Fischer he meets a bravura player who, like the American eagle, strikes to kill swiftly. Fischer won his right as challenger by some dazzling achievements: as when he clobbered ex-champ Petrosian in Buenos Aires last year. His artistic temperament — some say, petulance — does not endear him to everyone.
That's the scenario. Will Spassky uphold the claimed superiority of “Soviet man” by retaining the world's chess championship for the Russians? Or will Fischer become an American folk hero in victory, and get a congratulatory phone call from President Nixon? It will be a long hot July before we know.
