At the Paris Olympics this summer, Indian athletes went home with zero gold medals. The country’s chess players more than made up for it at the just-completed 45th Chess Olympiad in , with both the open and women’s teams taking home the gold. It was the first gold medal for either squad in the biennial event and the first national sweep of the two tournaments since China pulled it off in 2016.
Following a trail blazed by former world champion Viswanathan Anand and female star GM Humpy Koneru, a generation of young Indian superstars confirmed what looks to be a tectonic shift in the game’s balance of power. A record 194 countries sent teams to a competition that is one of the broadest and most inclusive in the world of sport. The U.
S. open team captured the silver medal, although it ranked as a slight disappointment for the pre-tournament No. 1 seed, with 2022 champion Uzbekistan taking the bronze.
The U.S. women’s team also brought home some hardware, earning a hard-fought bronze behind India and women’s silver medalist .
There were numerous heroes for the Indian squads, with top board GM Donnemaru Gukesh and No. 3 GM Arjun Erigaisi claiming individual board prizes in the open competition, while GM Divya Deshmukh also taking an individual gold with an undefeated 91⁄2-11⁄2 score on Board Three for the Indian women’s team. In an event that featured hundreds of matches and over 4,000 games, no game was more critical to the outcome than Gukesh’s Round 10 clash w.
