Barbados: Junior Chess player Chanon Reifer-Belle wins Youth Award of National Sports Council 

Barbados: Chanon Reifer-Belle is a national junior chess player of Barbados and for her outstanding year in chess, she was one of the five youths presented with a “Youth Award” by the National Sports Council at their awards ceremony last month.

Please read here: How she achieved such sucess

The 13 year old Queen’s College student showed her skills when she won the bronze medal in the Under-12 girls’ section in the Central American and Caribbean Youth Festival in November 2021.

In June last year, she won a gold medal in her division in the rapid competition at the Pan American Youth Online Championship before taking her second gold in the Under-14 Girls’ section of the blitz competition of the same Championship.

Chanon, competed in the Queens’ Online Festival, a series of continental women’s online blitz tournaments organised by FIDE’S Commission for Women´s Chess in cooperation with its Events Commission. Playing in the Under 1600 rated section, she ended in 20th position with seven out of a maximum 11 points after starting as the 52nd seed out of 131 entrants.

In October, she shared third prize in the second Margaret Prince Memorial Rapid Online Female Tournament and in November she was one of four Barbadian chess players who were conditionally awarded titles following their performance at the 44th FIDE Olympiad in Chennai, India. Achieving three and a half points out of seven points, she was the youngest Barbadian to ever compete at an Olympiad.

Chanon also represented Barbados at the 2022 Central American and Caribbean(C.A.C) Under 14 female chess championship which was played in Tegucigalpa, Honduras in November last year.

Chanon ended the year with a win in the Under 1400 rating section of the Michael Forde Memorial chess tournament. The event was played as a 10 player round robin and she dominated the field.

Congrats to Chanon and we wish you even more success this year.