Garima Sharma, Pune
India scripted history on Sunday by winning two gold medals at the 2024 FIDE Chess Olympiad in Budapest in both the men’s and women’s categories. On one hand the men’s team defeated Slovenia in the final round with grandmasters D Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi, and R Praggnanandhaa giving their outstanding performances in their respective matches whereas the women’s team defeated Azerbaijan by the score of 3.5-0.5. Earlier, the men’s team had won two bronze medals in 2014 and 2022 and the women’s team won a bronze medal in 2022 in the Chennai edition.
Even though it was a tough game, the 18 year-old Grandmaster Gukesh, played exceptionally well against Slovenia in the final match and was at best in the technical phase. On the third board against Jan Subelji, Arjun Erigaisi won the match using the unexpected Center Counter defense. Pragnanandhaa also achieved a strong victory against Anton Demchenko. The team only had one draw that too against Uzbekistan with a total win point of 21 out of 22.
On the women’s side, Divya Deshmukh and Vantika Agrawal played a significant role in securing the first ever gold for India.
The victory of both the teams portray the hard work of all the players over the years and is also a prominent mark in their individual careers and will help them climb up the international ranks.
After the historical win, team India celebrated their double gold medal by doing the iconic Rohit Sharma Walk. As per the reports, post the win, World Championship challenger Gukesh said that the focus of the team was to win this time especially after failing to win gold at the 44th Chess Olympiad held in Chennai in 2022.
He told the sources the team was disheartened after what happened last time where the team was so close to winning gold but still they didn’t lose hope. This time no matter what he wanted team gold for India and did not only want to focus on individual performance but wanted the team to win.
Gukesh also mentioned about his upcoming match against China’s Ding Liren at the World Championship.