MAHABALIPURAM: As Ukraine’s national anthem echoed around the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium late on Tuesday night, it was quite hard not to get lost in the moment. Even in peacetime, their anthem is very powerful.
After the invasion of Russia, it has attained greater meaning. The rough English translation of some of the lines are: “Upon us fellow Ukrainians, fate shall smile once more. Our enemies will vanish like dew in the sun. We will lay down our souls and bodies to attain our freedom. We will not let others rule in our motherland.”
Nobody needs a reminder as to what the country has gone through since the full-scale invasion of Russia in February. That the Ukraine women’s team occupied the top spot in the podium was in itself a miracle because like many people who call Ukraine their home, the players themselves have suffered untold trauma and devastation.
Take for instance, Anna Ushenina. Playing third board for the team, the undefeated 36-year-old won an individual silver apart from a team gold. She doesn’t even know if she can go back to show her medal to her friends, some of whom are still in Kharkiv, a city that’s very close to Russia.
“I don’t think it will change the war,” she said when asked what this gold means for her country. “Not very clear if I will be able to go back home to Kharkiv.” Both her family and she have had to move cities since the shelling began in February.
When the team assembled in Chennai in July for the Olympiad, what worked for them was that a few of them had managed to get some sort of preparation going, amid the invasion. They also had prior history of winning big tournaments. Ushenina herself is the former winner of the Women’s World Championship in 2012.
Apart from her, they also had in their ranks the famed Muzychuk sisters, Anna and Mariya. While the latter became women’s champion in 2015, Anna has won several world titles in the shorter formats. Both of them are GMs, with ratings above 2520. It made Ukraine strong contender to finish on the podium places.
Their team, in fact, was one of the few sides that had three GMs in the women’s line-up. They also had a very strong fourth board, Nataliya Buksa. On Tuesday, all of them contributed to beat Poland 3-1 to take the title from under India’s noses.
Fundraiser campaign
It’s also poetic that the Muzychuk sisters and Ushenina were involved in this triumph because they were one of the first to look out for the interests of fellow chess players in their country following the invasion. On Women’s Day in March, they got together to hold a fundraising marathon for the country. FIDE themselves carried the item.
“A series of events aiming to support Ukrainian chess players and their families affected by the war were held on International Women’s Day, by the FIDE Commission for Women’s Chess together with Chess24. The charity marathon included the Chess for Ukraine arena tournament named after the World Champions Anna & Mariya Muzychuk and Anna Ushenina, the team competition and a fundraiser to help female chess players in Ukraine.”
Of course, Anna and Mariya, too, had to flee their base, the city of Lviv. In a gut-wrenching interview with chessbase, she described that account. The journey took them from Poland, Germany and Spain.
At the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium in Chennai on Tuesday, that journey provided Anna, Mariya and the team’s three other members with some respite as they were crowned women’s champions for only the second time in the country’s history.
Ultimately, though, like Ushenina said, sport can never be a substitute for real life. She kept repeating three words inside the media centre on Tuesday. “I want peace”.