The Irish team for the upcoming Olympiad has been finalised.
Open Team:
Alexander Baburin
Mark Heidenfeld
Stephen Jessel
Conor O'Donnell
Colm Daly
Open Captain and Head of Delegation: Jonathan O'Connor
Women's Team:
Diana Mirza
Alice O'Gorman
Poornima Menon
Karina Kruk
Gearóidín Uí Laighléis
Women's Captain: Pippa O'Gorman
Congratulations and best of luck to all of those involved.
Several members in the official April 1 WAR list used for selection were not considered as they had not played the required (ICU and/or FIDE) games including: Brian Kelly, Alex Lopez and Gavin Wall. Several other members declined their invite: Sam Collins, Mark Quinn, David Fitzsimons, Stephen Brady, Philip Short and Monika Gedvilaite.
Unfortunately, one piece of information was left out of the criteria for captain selection which the 2016 International Selection Committee were quick to spot once they started deliberations. From 1/7/14, the following rules came into affect which eliminated several candidates from the equation:
4.1. No trainer will be offered free board & lodging at official FIDE events such as Olympiads, World, European, Continental, Pan-American, and Asian Team Championship, and World and Continental Youth Individual Championships, if he/she does not hold any official FIDE/TRG title (official implementation: 01.07.2014).
4.2. No trainer will be offered access to the official playing hall at official FIDE events such as Olympiads, World, Continental, European, Pan-American, and Asian Team Championship, and World and Continental Youth Individual Championships, if he/she does not hold any official FIDE/TRG title (official implementation: 01.07.2014).
The ICU would like to thank the other candidates for applying for the captain roles but I would like to apologise that the above criteria was not made clear on the ICU site prior to the advertisement of the positions. This affected the candidacy of Carl Jackson (Open team), Herbert Scarry (Women's team) and Colm Daly (Women's team).
As Carl Jackson was the only other candidate for the position of Open captain, Jonathan O'Connor was appointed unopposed.
The appointment of women's captain was left with three candidates: Pippa O'Gorman, Gabriel Mirza and Darko Polimac. Of the remaining three candidates, working in isolation, 4 of the ISC scored Pippa O'Gorman with the highest mark and hence, she was nominated.