Pioneer: Viswanathan Anand walked so Gukesh Dommaraju, Arjun Erigaisi and team could run
Gukesh Dommaraju, Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, Vidit Gujrathi and others have reiterated the impact Anand has had on their chess journeys.
Join our WhatsApp Community to receive travel deals, free stays, and special offers!
- Join Now -
Join our WhatsApp Community to receive travel deals, free stays, and special offers!
- Join Now -
This article originally appeared in The Field’s newsletter, Game Points, on September 25, 2024. Sign up here to get the newsletter directly delivered to your inbox every week.
India bagged a historic double gold at the 2024 Chess Olympiad on Sunday, becoming only the second team after China to win top honours in both the men’s and women’s categories since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Having made its Olympiad debut in 1956, it took India 68 years to win its first gold. This success in Budapest has been a long time coming. For more than five years, top players and experts around the world have predicted that India would be the next country to watch out for.
Apart from the two team gold medals, the Indian players also bagged four individual gold medals at the Olympiad. All four of them – Gukesh Dommaraju, Arjun Erigaisi, Divya Deshmukh, and Vantika Agrawal – are 21 or under, promising a golden era for Indian chess for the next few years.
These are remarkable times for Indian chess, but the foundation for these achievements was, without doubt, put into place when Viswanathan Anand emerged on the world stage in the late 1980s.
In a recent social media post on X after India’s win, world No...
