Antonio Osío, educator and promoter of the game
This caraqueño, born in Concepción Palacios Maternity Hospital in the 1950s, lived in San Agustín, where sports have always had a predominant place in the development and recreation of the children and young people of the populous capital parish.
Antonio Osío's first sports activities were in baseball and rubber pelota, since the Cervecería Caracas stadium was located in San Agustín. Then in school he practiced soccer, volleyball and basketball inspired by the glories of NBA player Wilt Chamberlain.
Being a beneficiary of the "Grand Marshal of Ayacucho" Scholarship Plan, Osío travelled to Spain to study Fishing and Aquaculture at a technical level in 1969, the year in which, after these agreements were broken by the government of Francisco Franco, in Spain, the project of building technological institutes was begun in Venezuela through an agreement with La Salle Foundation.
Later, as a result of this political situation in the Iberian Peninsula, Osío came to Nueva Esparta to impart his knowledge in what concerns fishing and aquaculture, finishing in turn his studies as a fish farmer. He later became part of the Flasa teaching team.
Antonio Osío is a fan of chess player Bobby Fischer. "I think Fischer was the first chess player who demystified this discipline by bringing it to the popular sectors. At that time, sport-science was only considered for upper-class people and this American showed that chess was within everyone's reach.
Osío learned this discipline in a self-taught way, reading and practicing the games of the German trebejista Emanuel Lasker (1868-1941).
The "Capablanca" chess school was the first one he participated in during his youth in Caracas, where he made a great friendship with Moisés Uzeasteis, whom he considers his brother, who had trouble winning his first game.
In 1979 he founded the chess club in the La Salle Foundation, in the headquarters of the Liceo Náutico Pesquero "Ramón Espinza Reyes" in the municipality of Tutores, where he had 50 players and started activities. Osío works as an instructor and a player at the same time.
He pointed out that when he founded this organization he found a seed sown in Nueva Esparta, initiated by Master Faenó (who was the first national champion of correspondence chess), Pedro Longart, Rigoberto Marcano; where in those times chess was considered a game of "envite and chance", and in many places it was not allowed.
For the creation of the club in La Salle Foundation he had the support of the then director of the institution, Gabriel Pastor, whom he thanks for his great collaboration with his chess activities, as well as Joaquin Marcona.
The first chess board for this institution was supplied by the mathematics teacher José Luis Contreras, and the one that Osío considered "a chess lover". And with that board, La Salle's students lined up to play. Contreras, in turn, also contributed his knowledge of this sport in order to develop the students' sporting talent.
The activity of the chess club of La Salle Foundation was projected to surrounding communities, since in the population of Las Hernández, the teacher Neyda Lobo in the school of this locality encourages the development of this discipline, since she is aware of the potential of chess in young people of school age.
