The Indian contingent made the world sit up and take notice after their performance at the Chess Olympiad where the country claimed three team gold medals — for open section, women’s category and the overall section — besides four individual golds, won by Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi, Divya Deshmukh and Vantika Agrawal.
It was the kind of dominance that is unprecedented at an Olympiad, particularly since there are over 180 nations competing.
India’s performance was so devastating that even opponents could not help but applaud.
“India were playing at their best and other opponents were struggling. It was a landslide!” Hungarian grandmaster Richard Rapport told The Indian Express.
Grandmaster Anish Giri puts it in perspective. “What we saw at the Olympiad was what we expected to happen. With the trends that we were seeing in the past few years, it was obvious that India was going to dominate at some point. Everybody was talking about it. But it’s one thing to talk about it in the abstract and assume that some players will dominate. It’s another thing to see who will dominate and how. And to watch it happen! So everybody was surprised but not surprised at the same time,” Giri told The Indian Express.
Giri even went to say that he was actually inspired by how well some of the Indians were playing.
“I started the event shaky, but then I had six wins at the end of the tournament. I was inspired by how they played at the Olympiad. I started to play better. It was incredible to see not just that India won, but also how powerful some of the players these days are, especially the young ones. The number of points Arjun Erigaisi, Gukesh scored!” added Giri, who, in the upcoming Global Chess League, will be teammates at the PBG Alaskan Knights with Nihal Sarin, the fourth star of the Indian ‘prodigy quartet’.
“In the open section, India completely dominated from the beginning (of the Olympiad). They won the event without a loss. They beat us 3-1 which was actually a decent result for both teams. We didn’t have chances on any board,” said Rapport, who managed to hold Gukesh to a draw (one of the two times the Indian teenager was held to a draw in 11 rounds at the Olympiad). “For me it was way more impressive that India won the women’s section. They were not as big a favourite as India in the open section. It was a tight competition in the women’s event. But in the open section, it was a landslide.”
Rapport pointed out that India’s greatest strength was its depth.
“When you have players like Arjun and Gukesh playing at their absolute best it’s very tough to play (India). And when you have Arjun playing on board 3 it’s even tougher because you don’t expect a player of his calibre (on board 3). That showed how strong the Indian team was. On your last board you had Vidit (Gujrathi). He was playing in the Candidates this year. He’s a solid player and he could easily be playing the first board in most other teams in the Olympiad. And Vishy Anand didn’t even play! And there are some young players who are not in the team yet but someday will be additions to the roster,” gushed Rapport, who will be teammates with Praggnanandhaa in the Alpine SG Pipers in GCL’s second edition.
Giri was also impressed by what he saw from Arjun and Gukesh.
“You have incredibly special players like Arjun or Gukesh. Normally, you should have one such exception! But for India they’ve come in pairs in some sense. At the Olympiad both Arjun and Gukesh have scored an insane amount of points. Because they’ve been competing with each other since childhood, perhaps, they were able to figure out a way to turn this into something positive. Often what I see is that when two players are competing and one is doing well, the other feels underwhelmed. And if one player starts to do badly, the other does well. They keep switching. But with Arjun and Gukesh, they’ve risen together. They have just accepted the fact that they have to focus on their game. I don’t think there’s jealousy between them. I would expect there to be jealousy. But there’s none. They’re just so successful on their own that I don’t think they compete with each other. They compete with themselves,” said Giri.
