The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Anand congratulates youth champions

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Oct 31, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Sport

Sport - Chess

Anand congratulates youth champions

Special Correspondent

BONN: In less than 24 hours after retaining the game’s biggest title, World champion Viswanathan Anand had another reason to be extremely pleased when he learnt that India had won four gold medals in the World youth chess championship in Vung Tau, Vietnam, on Thursday.

Sanyantan Das (under-12), Vidit Gujarati (under-14), B. Adhiban (under-16) and Padmini Rout (girls’ under-14) became world champions. In fact, India made a clean sweep in the Open under-16 section where S.P. Sethuraman and Debashis Das followed Adhiban to the podium. R. Preethi (girls’ under-18) claimed a silver and Pratushta Bodda (girls’ under-12) won the bronze.

Even as congratulatory messages kept pouring from all over the world, Anand was quick to take note of how the Indians had performed in the championship.

“It is indeed remarkable that we have so many world champions at the same time. Don’t forget we also hold both titles from the World juniors. It shows the youngsters are putting in a lot of hard work. It is nice to follow the youngsters and get this feeling that we are doing well at so many different levels. It’s really incredible. I wish them well,” said Anand.

Meanwhile, Anand is expected to be in India “most likely, in a week or 10 days.”

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport