No time wasted rejecting Dorkovich’s overture launched last week in Paris with the lovely Sophie Millett.
From the FIDE twitter feed with the picture below:
The IOC Rejects Chess for Paris 2024
“#Chess was not chosen as a #sport to be included into @Paris2024 #Olympic Games. The Organizing Committee put breakdancing, surfing, climbing and skateboarding on the shortlist. The IOC will consider the proposal and must reach a decision by December 2020. #ChessCandidateSport”
The idea was advanced by French Federation President and FIDE Deputy President GM Bashar Kouatly to include chess as a demonstration sport at the 2024 Paris Olympics. the home nation gets some say in adding such demonstration sports. Since FIDE was formed in Paris in 1924, his idea was to commemorate the 100th anniversary of FIDE as part of the cultural activities surrounding the Games. It was an extreme long shot, and the effort died quickly.
So the IOC has not actually acted on anything just yet. This was the French organizing committee deciding which four demonstration sports they wanted to add. As noted, those recommendations now go to the IOC for them to confirm or deny.
This is from the FIDE website:
The Paris 2024 organizers have chosen not to include chess in the program of the Summer Olympic Games, nominating four other sports instead. The IOC will consider this proposal during the next meeting of its executive board at the end of March. A final decision will be taken by December 2020.
FIDE accepts the decision of the Paris 2024 organizing committee and will continue to aim at reaching full recognition of chess in all countries. An important step consists now in achieving the involvement of our sport in youth and continental games.
FIDE was founded in Paris in the summer of 1924. President Arkady Dvorkovich stresses that the 100th anniversary will be duly celebrated in the French capital anyway.
Yes, and if you believe that the IOC wasn’t involved in this “local” decision, I have prime marshland you might be interested in purchasing. One has to think it likely that the launch of the initiative was made with the prior knowledge of and no objection from the Paris Committee. That the proposal was so swiftly rejected by the Paris committee is striking.
In spite of this deep disappointment, I hope NONE of us give up on our dreams of Olympic participation. Personally, I think I might stop playing chess and take up break dancing.
Take and post a video please. I like to think of it a Rapid Tai Chi. 
Is there certainty that all of the chess players in the event could pass the IOC drug testing regime? It would look really bad for FIDE to have a number of players caught using medications or substances on the banned list that WADA publishes. Before FIDE gets to be in the Olympics, it is going to have to provide assurances and institute a rigorous testing regime for all of its qualifying players. I can imagine that individual players, and national federations would balk at putting the players through testing before, during, and after the event.
In addition, the fear of electronic cheating might result in really intrusive security procedures which involve scanning all personal devices (phones, tablets, computers, watches or all types, pens). How many players will like having their chess notes scanned and copied under the notion of safety and security? The IOC has limited influence over the security/intelligence agencies of host countries.
I suspect there would be an adult ADD outbreak with numerous therapeutic exemptions for using ADD medication. I’d like to know what percentage of players in the German chess league when answering the anonymous questionnaire a year of so ago admitted to using such meds. I suspect it’s a much more widespread phenomenon than many in chess officialdom would care to admit.
I think there are a few reasons why chess will never be part of the Olympics. It’s not a high energy spectator sport for the most part, and then there is the quandary of who would qualify?
Originally the Olympics would be primarily amateurs, but now many professionals dominate the Olympics, especially in particular sports.
In the case of chess, it would be similar to the game of GO, in that there is a huge difference between amateurs and professionals, so the Olympics would almost certainly be dominated by the top 10 or 12 players in the world. With so many GM’s being able to play drawish chess when it’s tactically advantageous, it becomes the norm that the eventual winner will be the player that excels at shorter tie breaking games, which is currently Magnus Carlsen.
Another problem is that chess doesn’t have the same audience around the world. Certainly Europe and probably India have huge audiences, but outside of that, chess doesn’t have much interest. Even in the United States, it’s at best a niche entertainment that has few followers outside of people that actually play chess and understand the rules.
The Olympic committee has little interest in any sport that the basics can’t be explained on the back of a cocktail napkin, or has a world wide audience and the rules are already understood by the spectators.
There are many Olympic sports where the rules are not easily explained on the back of a napkin, so I don’t see that as a primary factor. And there are likely Olympic sports where the number of participants exceeds the number of spectators.
One thing that all Olympic events have in common is that they are associated with physical skills. Chess is not. That might be the main reason it never becomes an IOC event.
When I was in Turin for the Olympiad, another issue that was mentioned is that the IOC doesn’t like organizations using event names that suggest they are part of the IOC but are not, like the Chess Olympiad.
Over the decades, many attempts have been made to get chess into the Olympics. The answer has always been no, and the probable reason has always been that it would not attract a major audience.
So why would one expect anything less than a speedy no from the IOC this time around? They don’t even have to do any research. They just have to recycle one of their 39 previous replies to the idea.
It’s time to stop beating a dead horse, and to focus on ideas that have at least a ghost of a chance to succeed.
Bill Smythe
I’ve changed the topic title to reflect that the Olympics being discussed will be held in 2024, not 2014.
History is full of ‘lost causes’ that people pushed for years before they finally were achieved.
Think back to 1987 and the beginning of the ‘OMOV’ discussion. I was one of the few Delegates in Portland Oregon who spoke in favor of even studying it, and there were people who admonished me for that.
If there are people who want to keep pushing the idea of chess in the Olympics, I say good for them.
In the movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, there’s a quote about lost causes, which apparently goes back to Clarence Darrow: Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.
Bridge been proposed as a demonstration sport, but I couldn’t find any incidence of it being accepted. Although my research did show that Pigeon Racing was a demo sport in 1904. But nothing about “Beating a dead horse” as a demonstration sport – I guess the animal rights activists lobbied against it. 
Darrow, indeed. Marvelous film. As a counterpoint, Reinhold Niebuhr prayed, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
How about Cricket? Cricket was an Olympic sport for one year, 1900. The major controlling bodies oppose re-inclusion even though there apparently is sentiment to return to the Olympics.
I want to see the size of the napkin that can contain a written explanation of the rule of cricket!
Back in 2004, I was teaching a graduate school course in grant writing. One of my students was from Barbados and had started a Cricket league in Western Mass. I remarked that I’d watched the game a number of times and could not make sense of it. During a class break he explained it simply and cogently in less than ten minutes. I should have recorded it…
Too bad, that’s one I’m good at. Also jumping to conclusions.
Would that be a long jump or a high jump?
Bill Smythe