Riga: Buoyed by her defeat of the best woman player in the world, Latvia's finance minister is to skip a top EU meeting this week to persue her passion for chess, her spokesman said Wednesday. On Monday, Dana Reizniece-Ozola, a grandmaster for 18 of her 34 years, beat Hou Yifan of China in round four the women's team event at the FIDE Baku Chess Olympiad in Azerbaijan.

Her ministry confirmed she would not attend a September 9 meeting of EU finance ministers in Bratislava, Slovakia, in order to keep playing chess. "The minister is on vacation and will still be in Baku, so Latvia will be represented by the secretary of state in Bratislava instead," spokesman Aleksis Jarocskis told AFP on Wednesday. Video footage of the end of Monday's match showed the minister covering her mouth with her hands in disbelief as she realised she had won.