Olympiad Round 4 Opens with Makropoulos Tribute
By Douglas C. · Sat, 19 Sep 2026
Round four of the Chess Olympiad in Samarkand opened with a minute of silence for Georgios Makropoulos, who died earlier this week at 72 after devoting most of his adult life to the sport.
Round four of the Chess Olympiad in Samarkand opened with a minute of silence for Georgios Makropoulos, who died earlier this week at 72 after devoting most of his adult life to the sport.Before he was an administrator, Makropoulos was a genuine competitor. He won the Greek Championship seven times between 1971 and 1985, represented his country at three Olympiads as a player, and earned the International Master title in 1979. But it's his four decades inside FIDE's leadership that defined his legacy. He became a FIDE Vice President in 1986, moved into the role of General Secretary in 1990, and served as Deputy President from 1996 until 2018, spanning multiple FIDE presidencies and some of the organization's most turbulent stretches. As president of the Greek Chess Federation, he also played a central role in bringing two Chess Olympiads to his own hometown, Thessaloniki, in 1984 and again in 1988.The timing of today's tribute carries its own weight. It lands in the middle of an Olympiad already unusually consequential for FIDE's future, with delegates set to elect the federation's next president in Samarkand later this month. Few people shaped the institution Makropoulos leaves behind more directly than he did, and a moment of silence held in the same city where that succession will soon be decided feels like more than a formality.