Friday, October 14, 2011

The Great Chessboxing Swindle: on course for official recognition

[As mentioned in the comments box on Tuesday, I was interested to read the claim in Tim Woolgar's statement as candidate for the post of ECF Marketing Director that

we (i.e. chessboxing - ejh) are on course for official recognition by Sport England within the next six months.

Having looked into this in the course of writing this post last month, I thought I'd reproduce here, for the public record, the email exchange I had with Sport England on the subject.]




From: Justin Horton
Sent: 07 September 2011 15:19
To: info@sportengland.org
Subject: Enquiry

Dear Sport England

Sorry to bother you.

I'm a chess writer and I had have an enquiry which I'd be grateful to have answered. Is this the right email address to which I should send it?

All the best

Justin Horton

Huesca province, Spain





From: shared.services@sportengland.org
To: Justin Horton
Sent: Thursday, 8 September 2011, 9:16
Subject: RE: Enquiry

Good morning

Many thanks for your email- can you please advise the nature of the enquiry- I will then be able to advise accordingly

Kind regards

Kathy


From: Justin Horton
Sent: 08 September 2011 10:23
To: shared.services@sportengland.org
Subject: Re: Enquiry

Dear Kathy

Thanks very much for your reply.

All I wanted to know was whether or not Sport England have received a pre-application (or indeed a full application) for recognition on behalf of chessboxing.

All the best

Justin Horton



From: Richard Clarkson (richard.clarkson@sportengland.org)
To: Justin Horton
Sent: Thursday, 8 September 2011, 15:36
Subject: FW: Enquiry

Dear Justin

Thanks for your email which Kathy O’Neill has passed to me for reply. I can confirm that Sport England has not received any recognition applications in respect of chessboxing.

Richard

Richard Clarkson
NGB and Sport Directorate


[Chessboxing index]

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for posting this. I would imagine the newly elected Director of Marketing would now have to stand down.

Jack Rudd said...

The issue did come up during his election address at the AGM. His response - which has since been checked and found to be true by someone on the forum - was that to get recognition by the relevant body, he needed to have submitted two years' worth of accounts. His business has not yet been going long enough for this to be possible.

ejh said...

Which plainly makes him really badly placed to claim that they're "on course" for a recognition for which they hadn't even applied. Especially since he wasn't even aware of the rules that were applicable.