Bloodied, bruised and battered, the two boxers have just completed a brutal bout in the ring in Berlin’s Mitte district and remove their gloves to face their next challenge: a round of speed chess.
Welcome to the bizarre world of chess boxing, developed in inner-city Berlin and featuring alternate rounds of chess and boxing in a fierce combination of brains and brawn.
Inspired by a science fiction book, the sport that emerged initially as an urban art event has grown into one enjoyed by many across three continents.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Boxers play six rounds of chess alternating with five of boxing as they put their physical and mental skills to the test.
Chess rounds last a total of four minutes, with the players wearing headphones to block out cheers, coaches’ advice and the commentator’s voice.
“This is all about discipline and control of your body and your mind,” said the sport’s founder, Iepe Rubingh, a Dutchman who set up the first club in Berlin.
Rubingh, a chess-playing artist, took up boxing in his 20s. It was around that time that he stumbled across the work of graphic artist Enki Bilal, whose novel Froid Equateur first featured the sport.
“I started quite late with boxing training. I thought about this sport and said: ‘This cannot be done. You cannot play chess after a round of boxing. You are just not capable, your body will not allow you,’” Rubingh said.
With huge amounts of adrenalin pumped into the body during the fight, a heart rate of 170 and more oxygen in the muscles than in the brain, chess boxers’ limits are really tested when they take off their gloves and sit down, sweaty and out of breath, at the chess board.
“When you sit down to play chess after your boxing round then you look at the board as if it is the first time you see it,” Rubingh said. “It is a bit like biathlon, with the skiing and shooting.”
“Adrenalin is massive, making it difficult to think straight, and it also makes you fearless and that is the biggest mistake you can make on the chess board at that time. You have to train hard for this changeover,” he said.
Chess boxers have little in common with the stereotype of a prize fighter, or a chess player for that matter. Many of them are 30 or older and are in top physical condition, with a high IQ and a rating under the Elo system used by the World Chess Federation (FIDE).
Berlin police officer Frank Stoldt is one of them. Long a kickboxer, the 40-year-old Stoldt, who has an Elo chess rating of 2,000, joined the Berlin chess boxing club the moment he heard about it.
“I thought they had invented the sport for me,” said Stoldt, interrupting a round of speed chess in a small training room in the Berlin gym.
“It is a unique sport, combining two seemingly opposite things. But it has huge potential. It is this testing of the human body and mind that makes it so exciting,” said Stoldt, a former chess boxing world champion, before taking up his skipping rope for a cardiovascular workout.
Some have called chess boxers the ultimate fighters, excelling in both physical and mental bouts. Winners in each of the four weight categories can be declared by a knockout or a checkmate, or when playing time runs out.
The sport has grown beyond Germany to Russia, the US, England and Australia. So far, only men’s competitions have been organized, but a small number of women are now training at chess boxing clubs.
Losing its main sponsor amid the economic crisis has done little to dampen the sport’s expansion plans, it seems. A European championship fight in England next month will be followed by the world championship in Russia’s Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.
“Grass-roots level development is what we are doing right now and we can do that easily,” Rubingh said. “We do not need to organize a congress for 100 people like other federations.”
“We just need a group on Facebook,” Rubingh said during a tour of the visiting athletes’ Berlin accommodation, where the rooms were covered with wallpaper showing chess boxing scenes and sprinkled with quotes from famous boxers and chess players.
“Russia is the chess boxing nation and it is now waking up,” Rubingh said.
Eastern Europe, and Russia in particular, have proved to be fertile ground for the sport, with both boxing and chess widely played.
One of Rubingh’s plans is to stage an unofficial demonstration of chess boxing during the 2012 London Olympics.
“We are planning some guerrilla shows in London during the Games,” said Rubingh, who as an artist has blocked off roads in Tokyo and Berlin, causing traffic chaos.
“Our vision is to one day make it to the Olympics. I think there it would become the top discipline for the ultimate athlete,” he said.
NO HARD FEELINGS: Taiwan’s Lin Hsiang-ti and Indonesia’s Dhinda Amartya Pratiwi embraced after fighting to a tense and rare 30-29 final game in their Uber Cup match The Taiwanese men’s team on Wednesday fought back from the brink of elimination to defeat Denmark in Group C and advance to the quarter-finals of the Thomas Cup, while the women’s team were to face South Korea after press time last night in the Uber Cup quarter-finals in Horsens, Denmark. In the first match, Taiwan’s top shuttler Chou Tien-chen faced a familiar opponent in world No. 3 Anders Antonsen. It was their 16th head-to-head matchup, with the Dane taking his fourth victory in a row against former world No. 2 Chou, winning 21-14, 13-21, 21-15 in 1 hour, 22 minutes. The
Marta Kostyuk’s maiden WTA 1000 title in Madrid came on Saturday thanks to her power, poise and a pair of unexpected lucky shorts. The world No. 23 beat eighth-ranked Mirra Andreeva 6-3, 7-5 in under 90 minutes to secure the most prestigious trophy of her career, her third professional singles title and second in less than a month after Rouen. Yet as the 23-year-old Ukrainian posed for photographs at the Caja Magica, it was not just the silverware that caught the eye. Held alongside her team and her two dogs, Kostyuk showed off a piece of black men’s underwear, prompting
Tennis players are facing an unexpected opponent at the Madrid Open. A stomach virus or food poisoning has affected Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff, Marin Cilic and others, raising concerns. World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka avoided an upset by Naomi Osaka on the court on Monday and said she is trying to avoid illness by sticking to a diet of chicken breasts, rice and salad. The rumor among the players was bad shrimp tacos were to blame. Sabalenka knocked on wood for luck and said, “So far, so good. I heard that I have to avoid those tacos,” she laughed, adding “I stick to the
Throwing more than US$5 billion at a divisive new tour and walking away after five seasons does not look like good business, but LIV Golf was not all bad news for Saudi Arabia. Oil-funded LIV, which poached top stars and sent golf’s establishment into a tailspin, helped push the conservative kingdom into global view — one of its key aims, experts said. The exit, confirmed on Thursday after weeks of speculation, does not signal a flight of Saudi money from sport, even after the Middle East war that sparked Iranian attacks around the Gulf, they said. “Saudi Arabia is not
RSS