CHENNAI: Late on Saturday, Viswanathan Anand had posted his congratulations to the Indian Open team for winning the chess Olympiad. Minutes later, he had posted a clarification as it wasn’t mathematically over.
Hours into Sunday’s final round, the Open team, led by D Gukesh, completed formalities as they monstered the Slovenian side 3.5-0.5 to rubber-stamp their authority. If their gold wasn’t much of a surprise — they were one of the favourites — that was followed by a famous double as the women’s team beat Azerbaijan by a similar margin to script yet another piece of history.
Going into the final round in Budapest, the Open team was sole leader by two clear points. The players also enjoyed a clear advantage on tie-breaks. It was such a big advantage that in the team meeting before the Slovenia game they were kind of celebrating. On Sunday, Gukesh and Co. ‘forced ourselves’ to refocus.
Arjun Erigaisi came with a funky opening while Gukesh started enjoying a fairly big advantage over Vladimir Fedoseev, who had taken down Magnus Carlsen a few days ago. With two wins fairly certain, the celebrations could start in earnest.
When R Praggnanandhaa nailed his game, it sealed an utterly dominating two weeks. On air, Vidit Gujrathi, one of the unsung heroes of this team’s campaign, said this would go down as a win for the ages never to be repeated again.
Even as the Open team converted their positional superiority into points, the women’s team had to take the scenic route to global glory. D Harika, playing on the top board, was inconsistent while R Vaishali had slightly lost her rhythm in the second phase. But it didn’t matter as Divya Deshmukh, a world champion at age-group level, and Vantika Agrawal, on Board 4, became giants.
So, even as Harika and Vaishali had to grind their way to wins or salvage draws, Deshmukh and Agrawal enjoyed serene progress in terms of wins. In the end, they won two individual gold, an apt reward for what they had done to the collective cause.
