Leontxo García

Leontxo García Olasagasti (born February 12, 1956, in Irún, Guipúzcoa) is a Spanish lecturer, presenter, commentator and journalist specialized in chess.

Biography Leontxo García got into chess relatively late: he learned to play at school, when he was 13, but he didn't start to play seriously until he was 17. In 1975, at age 19, he became the absolute champion of Guipúzcoa and six years later, in 1981, he achieved the FIDE Master title. Later he achieved two International Master norms and everything suggested that he would remain devoted to playing chess when he was approached, in 1983, by the Basque newspaper Deia to be the special correspondent at the Kasparov–Korchnoi and Smyslov–Ribli matches (London). It was then when he discovered that his vocation as journalist was even stronger than his vocation as player, and shortly after he stopped participating in chess competitions.

From Deia Leontxo went on to Agence France-Presse, Spanish news agency EFE and La Gaceta del Norte, a former Bilbao newspaper; later he worked for the radio network Cadena SER and, finally, for El País (in 1985 he was special correspondent for two and a half months for the second Kasparov-Karpov match, in Moscow, and now he has a daily column at this newspaper) and Radio Nacional de España (1986). During those years he also worked with other media such as Radio Moscow, former magazine El Globo and, later, Argentine newspaper La Prensa.

During the World Match Kasparov–Karpov in Seville 1987 he presented 50 special programmes at Televisión Española (TVE) on a daily basis.

Leontxo ran Jaque magazine for ten years (1991–2001) and has lectured chess in many countries.

He ran and presented En Jaque (In Check), a 39 programmes series broadcast by TVE (1990–91), and produced, with Kasparov, the series La pasión del ajedrez (The passion for chess), containing 64 magazines and 25 videos, at Editorial Salvat (1998–99).

As chess instructor for the Basque Government (1985), he has experience coaching children and has taught postgraduate chess courses to school teachers. and adults. "Regular chess exercise improves brain aging and may even be useful in preventing Alzheimer's and other senile dementias", he says.

Leontxo thinks Spain needs a Rafael Nadal of chess: "It's the country with more international tournaments, about a hundred. In over a thousand schools chess is taught as an extracurricular activity... but it lacks a champion. Vallejo could have been it but he's lacked dedication. I'm confident about the Galician Iván Salgado, aged 19, junior world runner. We'll see.".

Leontxo considers that the best chess player of all time, "the most complete has been Kasparov, for his talent, work and energy. When he sat at the board, his rivals felt as though they were fighting against a force of nature". Listed in 1999 in the FIDE Golden Book "for his outstanding contribution to the development of chess" His phrase "Outstanding move", has become a popular internet meme (it depicts a still of him in a video showing a winning chess move)