By SHAMAOMA MUSONDA –

ZAMBIA opened her account at the 2014 World Chess Olympiads in Tromsø, Norway on a poor note with both the men and women teams beaten clean in Round-One games of the competition.

The men team led by International Master (IM) Daniel Jere was battered 4-0 by chess giants France who are rated as the third-best team in the world behind Russia and Ukraine.

The women team could not do any better when they came up against Switzerland in round one where they also came off 4-0 losers.

For the men, France lined up four Grand Masters (GM) while Zambia’s best rated player, Jere, is nowhere near a GM and it was not shocking that all four players were beaten at the world premier chess event.

The Zambian team opted to give Stanley Chumfwa the troubles on board one, going by his experience, and he was checkmated by Etienne Bacrot.

Jere, on board two, also lost to Laurent Fressinet and it was the same story for Chitumbo Mwali and Richmond Phiri who tumbled toRomain Edouard and Vladislav Tkachiev, respectively.

In the women section, Zambia’s team leader Lorita Mwango was beaten by Barbara Hund while Constance Mbatha also went down to Gundula Heinatz.

Zambia’s unrated Linda Hamoonga was no match for Camille De Seroux with Yvonne Saina also receiving the same treatment from Laura Stoeri.

In round two, the Zambian men team, with an unchanged line-up, was paired with South Korea, who were also beaten clean with a similar 4-0 scoreline by Qatar.

All Zambian players are better rated than their Asian opponents.

The women, also unchanged, were set to meet Sri-Lanka in round-two and will be comforted that their opponents were also losers in the previous round with a 3.5-0.5 score to giants Sweden.