I didn’t know too much about Opatija before being asked to be a journalist at the Championships so let me take a chance to share a little with you. There are only 11,700 inhabitants of this Western Croatia Town only 90 kilometres from the Italian town of Trieste from where I arrived.

While there is a rich Roman history to the area, the modern history starts in the mid 1800’s when railway arrives to the area. With this is became a popular holiday destination for the Austrian imperial family and Austrian nobility and soon many luxury hotels and villas were built.

In 1920 Opatija was assigned to Italy. Two years later, with the advent of Fascism, the Italian government started a program of forced italianization of the population, and most of the public positions were assigned to Italian-speaking citizens. In 1947 Opatija was given to Yugoslavia while most of the Italian-speaking population migrated to Italy.

I’ll report more to you when I have experienced some of the town.

The Championships

The nine day Championships comprise three events: 

• World Pairs Championship: three days comprising seven rounds of qualifying with three sessions of final;
• World Teams Swiss/KO Championship; five days comprising eight ten board matches of qualifying; 48 board quarter finals; 48 board semi-finals and 48 board of final
• World Teams BAM Championship; three segments played over one day.

Entries at the time of writing include:

Well that’s my introduction the event and I’ll keep you up to date during the course of the event.