Sports is replete with extraordinary feats that mere mortals are rarely capable of dreaming. Certain epochal moments in sports will forever be ingrained in our memories. India’s gold in the open and women’s categories at the Chess Olympiad in Budapest would be one such image. India won without the need for messy tiebreaks, the first such show of dominance since 2014 when China secured gold with a two-matchpoint advantage.
India had a four-matchpoint lead over its nearest rival—no team has won by such a big margin since the new scoring system was introduced in 2008. The open team of D Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi, Vidit Gujrathi and P Harikrishna, ably led by captain Srinath Narayanan, bagged 21 out of the 22 possible matchpoints—another record.
India also secured a record four individual golds. Gukesh and Erigaisi in the open and Divya Deshmukh and Vantika Agrawal in the women’s. Gukesh’s 9/10 points—a 3000+ rating performance—and Erigaisi’s 10/11 (2968) are probably the best performances ever in an Olympiad. While Arjun has now climbed up to World No 3 in live ratings, Gukesh is not far behind at No 5. When one considers the age of the players, the achievement seems even more astounding. Among the five players in the open, two are teenagers—Gukesh at 18 and Pragg at 19—while Erigaisi is just 21. Among the women, Divya is 18 and Vantika 21, while R Vaishali is 23.
It was not a flash-in-the-pan either. Over the last two years, these players had been sounding the bell. Pragg entered the World Cup final while Gukesh won the Candidates and will be playing Ding Liren in the World Championship in Singapore later this year. The result ahead of the biggest match of his life would give him confidence and he would enter as the favourite.
The revolution that Viswanathan Anand started more than two decades ago—as Magnus Carlsen called it last year—is bearing fruit now. The sport’s popularity has grown, especially in Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Delhi. Academies have mushroomed. Though there is a lack of sponsors, one is sure the power centre of chess is shifting from the West. This is the beginning of a golden generation.