Bengaluru: Superlatives can often be overused in sport. Pedestrian results may be labelled “great” and every superstar athlete is adorned with the “GOAT” title. Yet, every so often, a performance comes along that has shredded the competition and deserves all the hype and hyperbole it can gather. India’s run at the Chess Olympiad in Budapest — historic, course-altering double gold medals — by the Open and women’s teams is just that.
The Indian Open team pretty much assured itself of the gold with a round to spare on Saturday while the women had a battle to fight.
India defeated Slovenia 3.5-0.5 in Round 11 on Sunday to win the gold in the Open section by two match points. Arjun Erigaisi, D Gukesh and R Praggnanandhaa found wins while Vidit Gujrathi drew his game.
It’s not the medal alone, but the manner in which it was won — stomping and flattening all in their path. India lost just one game out of 44 over 11 rounds in a show of complete domination. Gukesh and Arjun, in rampaging form, were the key drivers. Gukesh had one of the greatest Olympiad performances in history, with a 9/10 score and 3056 performance rating. Arjun, his co-terminator in this mission, climbed to world No.3 in the live ratings with this Olympiad outing. Both are now on the cusp of Elo 2800. Arjun’s experience in Open tournaments saw him demolish lower rated players with Black, which can often be a tricky task. Gukesh and Arjun also won individual gold medals for Board 1 and 3 respectively.
The team had a daily tradition of “star” awards. “Srinath had brought stars to stick on our blazers but there were many extra ones, so they were given to the best player after every round,” Gukesh said.
It was a flawless tournament for India. Their wins especially against the USA and China were critical in seeing them through to the gold. Though the Ding Liren-Gukesh World Championship trailer didn’t eventually take place, Wei Yi and the world got a glimpse of what awaits the reigning world champion. Then came Gukesh’s win against Fabiano Caruana. While Gukesh and Arjun functioned like belt-fed machine guns with limitless capacity, Praggnanandhaa, Vidit and P Harikrishna offered the solid play, stability and support the team needed.
“When we beat European champions Serbia in Round 4, it felt like we were heading towards something special,” captain Srinath Narayanan said on the Chessbase India live stream. “The kind of performance Arjun and Gukesh had…I’ve never seen anything like this. Two players just winning every single game, I think just took every other team’s chances away. Our team was incredibly strong, had no weak links and we were hard to beat on any one board.”
It’s not a flash in the pan, or an inexplicable mad show. This performance has been motored by talents who have been nurtured over the past decade. We’re looking at a group of young, hungry players with work ethic, consistency and ambition. They’re not just happy to be doing alright as strong GMs, they’re here to win the biggest titles that matter — World Championships, Olympiads.
A lot of this accelerated growth in this bunch of 18-21-year-olds came about after five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand decided to take up the role of mentor around the time of the Covid pandemic. He unselfishly passed on learnings, pitfalls, resources and even his former seconds to the group.
It wasn’t always this way.
In earlier years, Indian teams struggled. Not just on the board.
“We had to check if AICF (All India Chess Federation) was putting up a proposal and check to make sure no names had been missed out. We had to have enough savings to manage expenses,” says GM Pravin Thipsay, who has played seven Olympiads for India. “We had to request AICF to follow-up with the ministry for travel approval. A week before, we would go to Delhi by train, check-in to cheap hotels at Connaught Place, visit the ministry every day, reply orally to government queries and then go book tickets. Then came a time when proposals were sanctioned only a day before departure. We would reach in time for the first round, fully exhausted and unprepared.”
In 1988, the Indian team lost the first round by forfeit because they reached Thessaloniki, Greece a day after the start.
Match points weren’t in vogue then. “We won our matches by 2.5-1.5 or 3-1 often, so our chances of playing top teams who routinely won 4-0 was scarce since we couldn’t match their game points,” says Thipsay. “I remember (Garry) Kasparov’s snobbish remark to Anand at the 1992 Manila Olympiad — ‘I don’t think we’ll play each other here’.”
Indian chess has travelled a long way to get here.
In the 2014 edition in Norway’s Tromso, India, led by captain RB Ramesh, won its first-ever Olympiad medal, a bronze, in the Open section. Two years ago, India won bronze medals in the Open and women’s sections, after closely missing out on the gold.
This show of complete domination is testimony to India’s depth and strength. The country may well be producing an assembly-line of GMs but that’s only seen as a starting point at best. Two players in the top five, five in the top 25 of the live ratings and now Olympiad champions is a statement. Of being world beaters. India’s era of domination in chess is no longer in the future. It’s here.