Russian glamour model wins Women's World Chess Championship

Insync

-Staff

By Staff

Saturday, September 20, 2008, 15:45

It is a common notion that beauty and brains cannot co-exist. While the statement was still hypothetical, it has been proved wrong by a Russian model.

A Russian woman, who worked as a model to raise the profile of chess, has won the Women''s World Chess Championship.

Alexandra Kosteniuk, 23, has been crowned "Queen of Chess" at the women''s championships held in Russia. She is the host of a popular podcast "Chess is Cool" which informs listeners about current chess events, and has adopted the motto "beauty and intelligence can go together" and proved her worth as a model.

"Modelling is not a job. It is just a hobby, like reading books," Telegraph quoted Kosteniuk, as saying. "I want people to see there is a fun side to chess. It can be made as exciting as soccer or tennis. Things are changing. I am clever, so I can play chess; and I am not so ugly, so I can model," she added.

At 14, Kosteniuk became a chess grandmaster, the youngest woman in the world to attain the title and made a name for herself on the international stage by reaching the final of the world championship in 2001, at 17, She has also won the European championship in 2004.

Kosteniuk credits her father Konstantin for the success, who left his army job when she was young, to devote his time to training her. "I can remember when my father introduced me to exercises. "He wrote on little cards the squares of the chessboard, like E4, A1 - or even false ones like E9 to test me. “Then he would show me cards, one quickly after the other, and I'd have to say whether the square was white or black on the board," she added. Konstantin taught his daughter to win chess game blindfolded in three moves when she was just five, in a bid to "exercise her brain".

Next time we will think twice before exclaiming 'models are dumb' and surely keep in mind that the pretty things walking the ramps 'might' have grey matters other that just sexy long legs.