FIDE Chess Olympiad 2020: India Clinch Historic Gold, Russia Declared Joint Winners After Server Malfunction
“We are the champions !! Congrats Russia!," the legendary Viswananthan Anand wrote on his twitter handle after the final.
Biswabrata Goswami
Hummingbird News
KRISHNAGAR, 30 AUG: In a dramatic finish at the 2020 Chess Olympiad, India has been crowned as joint gold medal winners along with Russia on Sunday.
Taking the final to the very last breath, two Indian players were
declared to have lost on time in the final round. However, both the players had
faced a connectivity issue, as a result of an internet connection.
Following the complaint lodged by the Indian side, the International Chess Federation declared India and Russia as joint winners of the gold. The federation has informed that it will release a statement pertaining to the matter soon.
Owing to the pandemic, this was the first time in history that the
Chess Olympiad was conducted virtually. Nihal Sarin and Divya Deshmukh lose
connection with the server and lose on time, with the latter being in a more
dominating position before the connectivity issue. However, the Indian
contingent rushed to lodge an appeal after the loss. FIDE immediately informed
that it would investigate the matter before announcing the result. After about
an hour of the result, FIDE announced that FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich had
made a decision to give gold medals of to both teams.
“We are the champions !! Congrats Russia!," the legendary Viswananthan Anand wrote on his twitter handle after the final.
The
first round of the final ended in a 3-3 draw with all the six games finishing
in stalemate. Russia won the second round 4.5-1.5 with wins for Andrey Esipenko
over Sarin and Polina Shuvalova over Deshmukh, leading to a controversy as the
Indians claimed the losses were due to connection issues.
In
the second round, Anand, coming in for P Harikrishna, had drawn with Ian
Nepomniachtchi while captain Vidit Gujrathi drew with Daniil Dubov.
Koneru
Humpy, the world rapid champion, was beaten by Alexandra Goryachkina and D
Harika drew with Alexandra Kosteniuk.
In
the first round matches, Gujrathi drew Nepomniachtchi, while Harikrishna and
Vladimir Artemiev shared the honours.
In
other matches, Humpy and Harika drew with Lagno and Kosteniuk respectively,
while young prodigy R Praggnanandhaa and Deshmukh, too, held their opponents.
Reacting to the win, Humpy said, "Well it is a bit
strange that we lost due to serve failure and our appeal was accepted. Well I
can say, we fought till the end."
Team India at Chess Olympiad 2020
The Indian squad at the Chess Olympiad 2020 included Vishwanathan
Anand, Vidit Santosh Gujarati (captain), P. Harikrishna, Koneru Humpy,
Dronavalli Harika, Bhakti Kulkarni, Nihal Sarin, Divya Deshmukh, R.
Praggnanandha, Vantika Agrawal, R. Vaishali and Arvindh Chithambaram.
