With a decisive 3.5-0.5 victory over Slovenia, GMs Gukesh Dommaraju, Arjun Erigaisi, and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu helped the Indian men seal their triumph at the 45th FIDE Chess Olympiad. They ended four points ahead of five other teams, with GM Wesley’s lone victory helping the United States take second place. thus defeated China, and Uzbekistan gained bronze medals and a victory over France thanks to GM Shamsiddin Vokhidov. Armenia, Serbia, and China narrowly missed the podium.
In the 45th FIDE Chess Olympiad for women, Team India also won gold for the first time, almost missing out in 2022 when competing at home. Following their commanding 3.5-0.5 victory over Azerbaijan, they watched Kazakhstan tie the U.S. team early on in the match on equal match points.
A far more cynical team than India might have wrapped up the Olympiad gold with easy draws against Slovenia, but India simply carried on with its game-winning strategy and dominated the field. The squad destroyed Slovenia, and Uzbekistan and the United States earned silver and bronze medals, respectively, despite their close victories.
India was virtually assured of gold medals heading into the final round, but that “almost” could be problematic from a psychological perspective. To FM Mike Klein, Gukesh said:
“We were already feeling festive during yesterday’s team meeting. I have to admit that I was so excited after the game yesterday that I didn’t even want to play today. I hoped there wouldn’t be a game since I wanted to play. Although we were all ecstatic, we made ourselves come here, concentrate, complete the task, and then rejoice.”
The cherry on top was a comeback victory for Praggnanandhaa, who had been the only member of the Indian team to lose the entire tournament.
China was not going for the enormous win they would have needed in that scenario, as World Champion Ding Liren made a 10-move draw with White against Caruana, even though nominally they might still have won the gold.
Given that only General Manager Levon Aronian was spared a rating point loss in Budapest, the outcome was excellent. Given that So appeared to be returning to his peak after winning the last two rounds, perhaps the outcome would have been different had he warmed up sooner. While defeating Praggnanandhaa had not prevented a loss to India, defeating GM Wei Yi, one of the event’s headliners, was an even bigger difference.
All of the top teams—aside from India—lost two games, and the outcome of the last round greatly affected the ultimate rankings. Though they lost on tiebreaks, Serbia’s 3.5-0.5 victory over Ukraine and Armenia’s 2.5-1.5 victory over Iran placed them in a tie for second place. GM Frederik Svane’s gold medal-winning 8/9 helped Germany overcome the teams tied for seventh place despite suffering severe losses early in the Olympiad. Given that the club started as the seventh seed, it made sense.
Women Team At Chess Olympiad 2024
Except for the tie for first place with Russia at the 2020 Online Olympiad, it was an incredibly successful day for Indian chess as the women’s team also won a historic first gold. It was their second team medal at the Olympics, having won bronze in 2022. It was also the first time since 2018 that a nation had won both of the main Olympic prizes (last year it was China).
The Indian women’s team lost to Poland in round eight after winning seven straight matches, in contrast to their male counterparts, who didn’t drop a single match. After a 2-2 draw with the United States, they triumphed over China and Azerbaijan to mount a formidable comeback.
Kazakhstan finished with a silver medal after losing their match against India 2-2, which is not terrible at all for a team that was seeded tenth. (It was their very first team medal at the Olympics.) The United States took home bronze, their best finish since 2008 (also bronze). Their best performance before this was silver in 2004.
GM Harika Dronavalli, who won over IM Gunay Mammadzada thanks to a decisive rook endgame, set the tone for India from the outset. The Azerbaijani player damaged her kingside unnecessarily by playing too passively, but Harika used a great endgame strategy to convert a drawn position into a full point.
While GM Vaishali Rameshbabu drew her game to earn a very impressive 3.5 points out of four, IMs Divya Deshmukh and Vantika Agrawal also won. The Indian women were relieved to see that Kazakhstan was unable to defeat the American women, indicating that gold would be guaranteed this time.
Harika was undoubtedly still thinking about the thrilling final day in Chennai, 2022, when India lost to the United States and dropped from first to third, earning bronze.
“I’m extremely happy that finally I made it on the last day,” she stated. “This tournament has been a rollercoaster ride for me, but I’m happy that the girls have improved in key games. In the end, we all came together as a team and won the final game, which means a lot. We came here and played the best teams, so I think we deserve it.”
India, not surprisingly, also took home the Gaprindashvili trophy, which honors GM Nona Gaprindashvili by rewarding the team with the greatest overall performance in both the women’s and open divisions.
Kazakhstan had opportunities to defeat the United States, but doing so by a similar wide margin like India’s was always difficult. Two teens faced off on board four, with WIM Alua Nurman (17) winning a pawn while IM Alice Lee (15) botched a move and held the draw. Nurman felt rather at ease about it afterward, maybe since her IM standard score of 6.5/9 is not too bad.
