On Sunday, India made history at the 45th Chess Olympiad in Budapest, Hungary, winning gold in both the Open and Women’s categories.
India created history by winning double gold at the Chess Olympiad. The Indian teams won gold in the open and women’s categories at the 45th Olympiad held in Budapest, Hungary. D. Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi, Divya Deshmukh, Vantika Agrawal, and Vantika Agrawal bagged the individual gold as well.
D. Gukesh, world no. 4 Arjun Erigaisi, 12th-ranked Praggnanandhaa, Vidith Gujarati and Pentala Harikrishna, who competed in the challenger bout of the World Chess Championship, competed for India in the Open category. Sreenath Narayanan, who was a non-playing captain at the last Chess Olympiad and Asian Games, was still with the team in the same role.
Grandmasters D Harika and R Vaishali, and international masters Tania Sachdev, Vandika Agarwal, and Divya Deshmukh were part of the Indian women’s team in the women’s category. Abhijit Kunte is the non-playing captain.
Winning gold in the Open as well as the Women’s Category used to be a routine task for the erstwhile Soviet Union. However, before India’s incredible sweep on Sunday, the feat had only been achieved once since the USSR’s double in 1986 — China having won both in the 2018 edition in Batumi, Georgia.
India thus became only the third nation to achieve this feat since the Open and Women’s Chess Olympiads were conducted simultaneously for the first time in 1972.
India was virtually assured of a gold medal ahead of the 11th and final round after winning the first eight rounds in succession and being held to a 2-2 stalemate by Uzbekistan in the ninth before beating USA on Saturday.
All it took was Arjun Erigaisi’s victory over Jan Subelj during India’s Round 11 meeting with Slovenia for them to confirm their maiden gold, regardless of the results of other games. It helped that D Gukesh and R Praggnanandhaa also won their games with Vidit Gujrathi being held to a draw.
The women’s team had a slightly bumpier ride to their maiden gold, suffering an eighth-round defeat against Poland followed by a draw against the USA after winning the first seven rounds on the trot. However, they managed to hold their nerve in the business end of the tournament and beat both China and Azerbaijan in the last two rounds.
Their gold, however, was only confirmed after Kazakhstan was held to a draw by the USA.
The penultimate round would have made a fitting final round since it saw the top-seeded U.S. team face off against second-seeded India. The United States had to win to catch India, but in the end, Gukesh and company continued their almost total dominance of the 2024 Chess Olympiad.
It wasn’t that the United States had nothing to cheer about, since GM Wesley So scored a convincing win over GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, inflicting India’s only individual defeat of the tournament.
