IN SHORT:
Competitions took place in cycling, archery, sailing, sports dance, baseball, table tennis and classical tennis, chess, bench shooting, triathlon, motor sports, taekwondo and basketball. In addition to these classic sports, which found a virtual platform so that the competition could take place according to the generally accepted rules of sports games, in-person and live viewers had the opportunity to see a version of combat sports in the game “Street Fighter” and racing in the fast-driving game “Rocket League”.
Virtual Taekwondo fight at the Olympic eSports Week
Photo: SCANPIX/EPA
Virtuality merges with real-world performance, because, for example, in the triathlon discipline, participants used physical sports simulators, which were added to the environment of the popular training platform “Zwift” for viewing, while chess participants played on the chess.com platform on the stage of the e-sports forum.
Kayaking competition in the Olympic e-sports week
Photo: SCANPIX/EPA
Chess has a new Olympic audience
Dana Reizniece-Ozola, managing director and deputy chairman of the board of the International Chess Federation (FIDE), when asked about chess’ participation in the e-sports week, sums up: “Changing the various formats of chess play does not change the very essence of the game”.
At the beginning of the last century and until the fifties, another “virtual” chess in its epistolary form was popular and recognized. People sent each other sealed letters with the next move in the game, and it was called correspondence chess.
E-sports and online have opened up new dimensions in chess – since the pandemic, the number of players at the amateur level on major online platforms has been growing very rapidly. Chess.com alone already has 100 million registered player profiles and plays around 25 million chess games every day, and it is not the only platform. More and more commercial tournaments are taking place directly online – whole series of games with the participation of personalities from the world of chess.
Dana Reizniece-Ozola
Photo: Paula Čurkste/LETA
It is interesting, accessible and exciting for the audience as well, because the event can be combined with commentary and computer analysis, explained Reizniece-Ozola.
“It is a natural development for chess that many developments are already in a virtual environment and online, and I expect that they will only develop further,” said Reizniece-Ozola. “We are very happy that chess has been integrated into the eSports Olympic Games series – we have a long-standing dream and a big goal in the federation that chess will also become an Olympic sport, and therefore events like this forum in Singapore are very important.”
Hour of eSports stars
“The Olympic movement in e-sports and general interest in computer games in the Olympics started more than five years ago. It was not completely clear how to achieve the integration of e-sports,” one of Latvia’s leaders in the e-sports community expressed his vision of the Olympic e-sports week , leader of computer club “Goexanimo” and chairman of the board of the Latvian Electronic Sports Federation Jānis Dzērve.
“As we can see, it seems that at the moment it has been thought out, both funding has been found to support the national teams and partners have met, who are united by the same e-sports values,” said Dzerve.
Jānis Zerve
Photo: Ieva Leiniša/LETA
He indicated a certain inertness and reluctance to unite e-sports into a single entity with traditional sports known to sports fans. However, Zerve considers the week of Olympic e-sports to be an excellent example.
“We see that such a sensitive topic as shooting skills through the integration of the traditional discipline – bench shooting – is being addressed worldwide and in the well-known e-sports game “Fortnite”. It is an integration where the traditional meets the new, digitally popular and perhaps from it a good connection will be created by uniting the fans of both sports, which, in my opinion, is also the task of the e-sports week in general – to show the points of contact,” said Dzërve.
“We would like the Latvian Electronic Sports Federation to be officially integrated into the common sports movement someday,” said Dzērve. “We are significantly behind the neighboring countries, no one openly talks about it. I am afraid that we will end up in a situation where the traditional sports community and leading politicians will find themselves and be unexpectedly surprised that we are in the last place in the region, or that our development program does not exist. At the national level, there are still people who unable to understand what e-sports is and why it is needed at all,” Dzerve critically assessed the situation.
He also added that the initiatives of Latvian e-sports representatives for schools and young people have so far not received support, but are “on the desks of deputies and in the drawers of ministries”.
“Despite all that, our little country per capita (per capita) there are a lot of talented players in different games, we have experienced specialists who can share the experience and expand it all. We are working to gain political support for our ideas,” Dzerve emphasized.
Motorsport includes an e-dimension
“Those who are fast in the virtual simulator are often able to be fast on the racetracks as well, so this event is definitely a way to connect traditional driving and e-sports,” said Artūrs Virbulis, a car enthusiast, racing driver and spokesperson of the Latvian Automobile Federation (LAF). .
Autosport racing in a simulator during the Olympic eSports week
Photo: SCANPIX/REUTERS
“E-sports players need a relatively shorter adaptation time so that when they get behind the wheel of real cars, they become leaders on the race tracks,” added Virbulis. “Our experience – LAF – is to organize competitions in various disciplines at the national and even Baltic level – highway, rally, drifting. Last year, the Motorsport Games organized by the International Automobile Federation (FIA) took place, which is also such an Olympic-level event, unofficially even called the Olympic Games. in motorsport. One of the disciplines there was also e-sports, where one representative of Latvia already participated.”
LAF followed the developments in Singapore and in the near future they might be ready to delegate Latvian representatives to represent the red and white colors in e-sports as well.
“I think that involvement and interest on the part of traditional sports federations depends on the focus of attention. It correlates quite directly to our sport,” said Virbulis. “I would like to mention one more accent – anyone can start doing e-sports and car topics in a virtual space. Young people can try their skills at an early stage and with minimal costs, if we compare it with the cost threshold required for motor sports on the real track. We really we are happy with the development of eSports in recent years because it both connects and helps new participants and interestingly, motorsport racing professionals also use simulators to improve their skills on new sports tracks, to hone their skills. There has really been a good connection in motorsport between virtual and real competition environments.”
At the level of officials in Latvia, the discussion will continue
The Secretary General of the Latvian Olympic Committee (LOK) Kārlis Lejnieks emphasizes that he represents the part of the sports community that sees the greatest value of high achievements in sports as inspiring people to get up from their comfortable couches and go for sports in the physical world.
“The representative of sports, which includes activities at all levels, in Latvia is primarily the Ministry of Education and Science. We in the LOK create the conditions for high-achieving sports, represent the country in the Olympic Games. E-sports as part of the Olympic events is not yet at the center of the priorities of the LOK – many tasks are internal and also with traditional sports tasks,” Lejnieks pointed out.
The general secretary of the LOK added that, for example, parallel to the Olympic e-sports week, the European Games will take place, where Latvian athletes accumulate qualification points for the Paris Olympic Games.
General situation – very dual
Addressing a number of representatives of traditional sports, an indication of busyness at the European Games was the most polite reservation. Some of the management of sports federations are openly whining and putting e-sports under the category of “children’s entertainment”, obviously not being able to connect today’s young people with their fans of traditional sports.
Annual royalties of Latvian professional e-athletes exceed the average salary in most individual and team sports disciplines, falling behind perhaps only Latvian superstars – sports millionaires in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Hockey League (NHL).
For a couple of years now, there have been talks on the sidelines about the need to include e-sports as a nomination for the Latvian Sports Award of the Year. Until now, the inert majority has been able to block the entry of new dimensions into the biggest annual celebration of the sports society. Maybe 2023 will be a year of change?
