Chess champion plays at birthplace

Press, 29 April 1989, Page 5

Chess champion plays at birthplace

LEONID OBSHIRNOV

By

NZPA-Novosti Tallinn New Zealand’s champion chess player, Ortwin Sarapu, was the centre of attention at the Paul Keres memorial chess tournament in Tallinn, Soviet Estonia, this month. For Sarapu, of Auckland, it was an emotional moment when he stepped off the plane. It marked his return to the place of his birth after 46 years.

“New Zealand is the most beautiful country in the world but Estonia is close to my heart. I was born here,” said Sarapu who left Estonia, aged 18, during World War 11. Newspaper, radio and television reporters besieged the visitor from New Zealand, in spite of the presence of a lot of other prominent chess players from the U.S.S.R., Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Romania, Yugoslavia, Israel and Cuba.

While competing in the tournament, Sarapu took the opportunity to be reunited with relatives, among them

Aigar Saliste, who is a forest warden. Sarapu has invited him to visit New Zealand, where Saliste would like to study scientific methods of forest conservation.

Sarapu made many new friends and gained new admirers of his chess talent.

His former chess colleagues, with whom he played before the war, have not forgotten, however, that Sarapu finished runner-up at the Estonia junior chess championship in 1940 and that he played at that same time with Paul Keres, the Estonian chess stalwart who died in 1975 and for whom the April tournament was a memorial. Keres more than once led the Soviet select team at the most prestigious international chess tournaments.

Sarapu played consistently in the tournament to tie for sixth place with two Estonian players, Andres Voorema and Jaan Narva, in his group.

Most of the other entrants were young enough to be his grandchildren and the second oldest was aged 35.