One medal was missing from Viswanthan Anand’s collection — the one from the biennial Chess Olympiad. On Sunday, the gold-sharing performance of India in the inaugural FIDE online Olympiad gold has ensured a new addition to five-time World champion’s trophy cabinet.
“I think Olympiad is a very special title. And on top of it, I really liked the sensation and the ambiance of winning as part of this team. Somehow, getting together with lots of chess players, and feeling that we are fighting for a common cause, that’s very inspiring.
“And specially, in these times of the pandemic, this was the best social event I had in some time. Winning the Olympiad medal will add to my collection and my trophy cabinet. Just a great memory,” said an elated Anand.
After a drama lasting two hours on Sunday, India’ protest over two “lost” games following internet outage across several nations, was upheld and it was declared joint winner with Russia.
Many Indian players, including Anand, congratulated Russia. In contrast, leading Russians — Ian Nepomniachtchi and former women’s World champion Alexandra Kostinuik — took to twitter to express their disappointment.
Timely recovery
When The Hindu asked Anand if Nihal’s timely recovery to reach an equal position, when seen together with Divya Deshmukh’s high winning prospects (in the two affected games), had a role to play in the eventual verdict, he said, “I would say it could’ve had an impact. But honestly, it’s not nice for FIDE to decide these things by judging the positions. I guess, it would have been hard for FIDE to take that decision, if we had lost on all six boards, or something like that.
“So it helped that we were in good positions, on Divya’s board and Nihal’s position had improved a bit and it must have helped. But I would be uncomfortable to know that they are sitting and judging the positions or something!”
Great experience
On his part, skipper Vidit Gujrathi said, “It was a great experience to lead a team, featuring Anand and Humpy. I still have the autographs I took of these two legends. In case of juniors, we had to consider their styles before finalising our line-up.
“Like Nihal and Vantika Agarwal are more solid in their approach while Praggnanandhaa and Divya are sharper. So the choice depended on the situation we were in.”
