More on the Malaysian olympiad team

Further to my previous blog post on this subject, here is another interesting angle.

Each federation is to register their team members for the entire delegation online. Malaysia had no finalized line-up  (as did a few other federations ) as the deadline passed. Someone thought of the bright idea of entering dummy for the names - see picture.

Can you see something really strange? No? Let me point out to you.

For the men's line-up there are four dummy names but for the women's, you can see five. Which means women team have a reserve but not men (for both sections there are four boards). It seems that MCF already decided that men team does not need any reserve.

Both teams also feature a captain. We also have a head of delegation, delegate and commission member for a total of fourteen pax.

By the way, the deadline for completing the names is 20th July which have already passed.

If the MCF have not already submitted the actual names then there are more troubles ahead. Khanty Mansiysk is not a final destination stop for major airlines. In order to get there, the organizers have arranged charter flights from some major cities like Dubai and Moscow. The flight costs (each federation has to foot the bill) vary depending on the city. The flight costs USD2,000 from Dubai and USD1,000 from Moscow. That is quite mind blowing for me. A team of fourteen persons will cost USD28,000 via Dubai. That works out to roughly just over 90,000 ringgit, much more costly than a KL to Dubai flight. If you include the regular flight to Dubai plus various taxes and expenses, the total budget can easily come up to 110,000 ringgit.

And also by the way, without a confirmed team list, getting on one of those chartered flights could be a problem. Logically, the organizers will arrange just enough flights for the registered teams.

Perhaps we can take a leaf from Anand and do an European overland trip. We can even do some team bonding on the way to the tournament!