The abortive Women's Olympiad of 1961

[JustinHorton]

OK, here's a general appeal: has anybody got the BCM for December 1961 and would be able to send me a scan of the appropriate material? (Via PM, or email, or any other means.) It's kind of the last piece in this particular jigsaw and it would also be of help to Olimpbase.

[Gordon Cadden]

I have the BCM magazine for December, 1961, but cannot find any comment on the Women's Olympiad. It should be remembered that this was the Cuban Missile period, and the Iron Curtain came firmly down across Eastern Europe. The European Zonal Tournament was moved from Holland to Czechoslovakia, because grandmaster Wolfgang Uhlmann could not obtain an exit visa to leave the GDR.

[JustinHorton]

I have the BCM magazine for December, 1961, but cannot find any comment on the Women's Olympiad.

So is this not correct?

The December 1961 BCM mentions the 1961 Women's Olympiad as being cancelled by virtue of the Dutch inability to guarantee visas for GDR participants. This is in a short paragraph in Golombek's one and a bit page report on the FIDE Congress in September, which details a number of other FIDE decisions.

[Richard James]

It's in the November 1961 BCM (p312):

"The Ladies International Team Tournament at Emmen, in Holland, having been cancelled owing to the refusal of a visa to the East German team, it seems possible that the event may be held in Poland."

[JustinHorton]

That sounds what we're looking for, unless we are correcting Roger incorrectly.

I note that a portion of the same page appears here.

[Richard James]

And from BCM October 1961 (p296):

"We understand that the Ladies' Olympics, which was to have been held at Emmen (September 17th to October 8th), was abandoned owing to difficulties in obtaining entry visas for some of the teams."

[JustinHorton]

I have the BCM magazine for December, 1961, but cannot find any comment on the Women's Olympiad. It should be remembered that this was the Cuban Missile period, and the Iron Curtain came firmly down across Eastern Europe. The European Zonal Tournament was moved from Holland to Czechoslovakia, because grandmaster Wolfgang Uhlmann could not obtain an exit visa to leave the GDR.

Mark Weeks has a possible explanation: harsh regulations on travel from West Germany to East Berlin were implemented in September 1960, so it's plausible that this was the reason for Uhlmann, in retaliation, not receiving a visa. This might answer the question posed here, as to how a policy of visa refusals, which seemed to have been imposed in retaliation for the erection of the Berlin Wall, had applied to Uhlmann almost a year before that event.