Armenian chess players won Gold at the Chess Olympiad 2008!

We won! Moreover, we defended our chempion status ! (Armenia won Gold the previous Chess Olympiad 2006 in Torino too).

photo from armenianow.com

Here's our team:

• Levon Aronyan
• Vladimir Hakobyan
• Gabriel Sargissian
• Tigran L. Petrosyan (who was my classmate for some short period)
• Artashes Minasian

During the final round, Armenia's only win came on board four where Tigran L. Petrosyan beat Chinese Li Chao.
Thank you Tigran and others!

And here's a nice photo report from the finals.

photo from the Chess Olympiad in Dresden official website

...and if you watch statistics of winners by each year in the wikipedia, you'll notice that USSR and post-soviet countries were almost in no competition for the recent decades.

For the second consecutive Olympiad, top-seed Russia failed to take a medal. From 1952 to 2004, they (and their predecessor the Soviet Union) never finished below second place.  (Guardian)

Ice skating show with the famous stars in Yerevan

On October 31 I attended the opening ceremony of the newly reconstructed "Sport & Concert complex" (SCC) of Yerevan.

It was under construction since 2005. The SCC has one of the biggest concert halls Yerevan (with 2000 seats) and has the biggest  ice for hockey and skating (for about 8000 attendees). It can also host mini-football and volley-ball games.

SCC was built in 1983 and is named after Karen Demirchyan (former leader of Soviet Armenia of that times and former parliament speaker of independent Armenia). The building itself reminds of the Sydney Opera House.

The newly reconstructed complex was opened with the presence of the president of the Republic and many state officials.
The show was called "Ice age" and was something like the popular show "Ледниковый период" on Russian TV where famous stars of ice skating are showing sport and dancing tricks.

Some of the most famous stars of ice-skating were invited. Olympic champions, World championships multiple champions like Irina Slutskaya, Alexey Yagudin, Maria Petrova & Alexey Tikhonov, Tatiana Navka & Roman Kostomarov, Margarita Drobiazko & Povilas Vanagas, Tatiana Totmianina & Maxim Marinin and it was hosted by Ilia Averbukh and Armenian singer Emmy. Some of the performances were breathtaking and the lighting in the hall was wonderful. I fully enjoyed it !

and the final fireworks :)