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Geir Helgemo (born 14 February 1970)[1] is a professionalbridge player who was born in Norway but is now a citizen of Monaco. Through 2012 he had won three world championships inteams-of-four competition.[2] As of August 2018 he ranked first among Open World Grand Masters and his regular partnerTor Helness ranked second.[3]
Helgemo was born inVinstra, Norway.[citation needed] For several years through 1994 he represented Norway on both its junior and open teams. The juniors won the 1990 European Championship and both teams finished second in the 1993 World Championships. From that time Helgemo played withTor Helness on the open team, which was always strong and won another world silver medal in 2001.[2][4] Norway finally won the world team championship in 2007, the biennialBermuda Bowl, with a team of six including Helness–Helgemo as anchor pair.[5]
At the inaugural2008 World Mind Sports Games inBeijing, Tor Helness won theOpen Individual gold medal and Geir Helgemo won the silver. Norway's open team won the bronze.[2]
From 2011 Helgemo and Helness were full-time members of a team led and funded by theSwiss real estate tycoonPierre Zimmermann, under a contract expiring in 2016. The team, not yet playing full-time, finished third in the2010 World Championship and subsequently competed in theEuropean Bridge League open championship. In 2012, all six members of the team became citizens ofMonaco.[6] In 2017 Helgemo and Helness were both convicted of tax evasion."[7]
Helgemo's team reported a false score (claiming a match was played when it was not to the benefit of both teams) in a match in Norway. All players involved were suspended by the Norwegian Bridge Federation. Three of the players involved,Terje Aa (ACBL # 9027661), Geir Helgemo (ACBL # 4036808) and Jørgen Molberg (ACBL # 8896631) were members of the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) and were suspended by the ACBL.[8][9]
On 1 March 2019, at which time Helgemo was the world's highest-ranked player, theWorld Bridge Federation (WBF) announced that he had been suspended for a year after testing positive for two banned substances in a sample he had provided at the World Bridge Series inOrlando in September 2018:clomifene and synthetictestosterone. The drugs were said to be "not performance enhancing" by Kari-Anne Opsal, the president of the Norwegian Bridge Federation. The WBF is recognised by theInternational Olympic Committee and therefore follows theWorld Anti-Doping Agency's rules on which drugs are permissible. The ban, backdated to begin when he accepted a provisional suspension, is due to expire on 20 November 2019. A spokesperson for the Monaco Bridge Federation said: "We regret that a talent such as Geir Helgemo is sanctioned under an anti-doping regulation that is certainly adapted to physical sport but totally unsuitable for brain sport."[10]
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