India completed its dominance against 188 teams at the Budapest Olympics. They set a record with an Open winning record of 21/22, putting them 4 points ahead of the chasing pack, while their four individual gold medals include 18-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju’s 3000+ Performance, he challenged for the world title in November.
It was a seminal moment in chess history, comparable to the 1945 broadcast match between the United States and the Soviet Union, when the U.S. team, winners of four Olympic gold medals in the 1930s, suffered a crushing 15.5-4.5 defeat, kicking off the Soviet Union’s long 45 years of supremacy, interrupted only by Bobby Fischer.
India’s dominance is reminiscent of the legendary Soviet teams of the 1950s and 1960s, a team packed with world champions and challengers that rarely lost a match, let alone a match. With Gukesh and Arjun Erigesi at 21, India could prove to be the Mikhail Botvinnik and Vasily Smyslov, or Anatoly, of the 2020s and 2030s Karpov and Garry Kasparov.
Although the 5th to 23rd positions in the Open were all occupied by European teams, for the first time at any Olympics, no European team finished on the podium in either the Open or Women’s competition.
Gukesh and Erigesi won their first and third gold medals respectively, scoring at a pace that not even Magnus Carlsen could match. The Norwegian’s ambitions to close one of the few gaps in his career remained unfulfilled as he had to settle for a top-level bronze medal.
Gukesh’s current world ranking has risen to No. 5, while Erigaisi has jumped to No. 3. league. The games will kick off at 1pm (BST) on Saturday and 10am on Sunday.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi received the two Indian teams at his official residence on Wednesday to congratulate them on their achievements, while Gukesh was awarded the Olympic Games’ best match award for his victory over China’s Wei Yi.
If Gukesh fails to reach 2800 points this weekend, he will surely do so in the $2.6 million world championship against China’s Ding Liren on November 25 in Singapore. Ding will start a 14-game winless run in the Classical Chess Series since defeating Max Warmerdam in the 12th round at Wijk aan Zee on January 27. The latest odds are 2/5 for Gukesh and 9/5 for Ding Junhui. The contrast with when Ding Junhui won the Olympic team and individual gold medals for China in 2018 is very obvious and sharp.
If Gukesh and Erigaisi can continue to improve their ratings to around 2800, Carlson’s current No. 1 ranking of 2830 could become a realistic target in a year or two, albeit with a lower rating.
Vishy Anand, the world champion from 2007 to 2013, was the inspiration for India’s success. Anand mentored several players and was on hand to witness the decisive moments. Eventually, the Indian team qualified for the 2022 Chennai Olympics, but at home, the Indian team performed poorly in the final rounds and was overtaken by Uzbekistan. This time Uzbekistan finished behind India and the United States in bronze, which was still an outstanding result for the young team and world No. 6 Nodelbek Abdusatlov.
For Team USA, who lost to the winner and suffered a costly defeat against Ukraine, the lingering unanswered question is if Hikaru Nakamura had chosen to play in Budapest rather than live-stream his Comment, whether they can win the gold medal. Nakamura considered Wesley Su a weak link, but the former Filipino player outlasted China to secure the silver medal for the United States after a shaky start.
In the end, the Olympic score leaders were India with 21/22 match points, the United States with 17 points, and Uzbekistan with 17 points.
England was the eighth seed and ended up ranked 20th on 15/22. Eight-time British champion Michael Adams, 51, is the top scorer with an unbeaten record of 6/9, while former Russian player Nikita Vitiugov is at the top of the list Scoring is limited to 50%, with his two wins coming against weaker opponents in the first and final rounds.
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England’s squad is aging, and although Britain’s youngest-ever grandmaster, 15-year-old Shreyas Royal, is expected to be selected for the next Olympics in Tashkent in 2026, that only solves one problem. There are plenty of other promising British teenagers, but none of them seem to have the potential to be over 2,500 in the next two years. Special incentives may be needed, similar to the generous rewards Jim Slater offered the new British Grandmaster in 1973.
India won the Women’s Olympics with 18/22. Kazakhstan also won the silver medal with 18 shots but was at a disadvantage in the tie-break, and the United States won the bronze medal with 17 shots. Team Cairns’ Dominance Chess Queen will award $100,000 to each of the top five American female chess players to become open-level grandmasters within the next five years. Longtime America’s No. 1 Irina Krush has received it.
Jovanka Houska is England’s top scorer with 8/10, while Lan Yao and Harriet Hunt also score over 64%. Players at the bottom are underperforming and there is a tendency to lose in pairs, but more experienced players and rising stars will emerge in 2026 to confirm the continued progress of British ladies chess.
The chess elite will come to London next month when the six-team Tech Mahindra Global League takes place at Friends House in Euston from 3 to 12 October. World champions Carlsen and Anand, world No. 2 Nakamura and double world title challenger Ian Nepomniacki will headline the competition. Olympic hero Eligues also competed.
The time limit is fast chess, 20 minutes per player per game, with the added benefit for the audience that there are no increments per move, meaning some exciting time scrambles. Daily and season tickets are available at the Chess and Bridge store on Baker Street or online.
3939: 1 R7e6! So if fxe6 2 Ne7+ and 3 Qxg6+ win. End of game 1…Qxe6 2 Rxe6 fxe6 3 Nxd6 Rxd6 4 Qg6+ Kf8 5 Qf6+ Kg8 6 f5 hxg3 7 Qg6+ Kf8 8 fxe6 1-0. In Budapest, Erdogmus became the first player to reach 2,600 points at the age of 13.
