Last Updated:
D Gukesh won two gold medals – individual and team – from Chess Olympiad. (Screengrab/ANI)
Grandmaster D Gukesh played a vital role in securing India’s first ever gold medal from the Chess Olympiad.
India chess prodigy D Gukesh arrived in Chennai following India’s historic campaign at the recent Chess Olympiad Budapest (Hungary). Gukesh was key to Indian men’s team first ever gold medal winning campaign that saw them beat Slovenia 3.5-0.5 in the final round.
Gukesh also clinched an individual gold and had an outstanding campaign, collecting 9 points from 10 games. He also defeated world no. 3 Fabiano Caruana as India took another step towards the gold medal beating USA 2.5-1.5.
“This tournament for me, especially since what happened last time, we were so close as the team to win goal. This time I thought no matter what I’m going to do, whatever it takes to win the team goal. So I did not really think about the individual performance much. I just wanted the team to win this time,” Gukesh told Chess24.
Later this year, the 18-year-old Gukesh will challenge China’s Ding Liren for the world title later this year. However, he says it wasn’t on his mind during the Olympiad.
“In this tournament, I wasn’t thinking about the match. Olympiad is one of the most important tournaments of the year and I was just thinking about the event, but it’s nice to see that I’m getting into shape and feeling myself,” Gukesh said.
“And yeah. Still some time left, so we’ll do some more work and hopefully for the match I’ll be ready,” he added.
Gukesh revealed he’s been doing meditation and yoga to deal with pressure.
“I’ve been practising meditation and yoga for quite some time already. And surely it helped and also I used to handle these things very badly before. But I think once I got a bit mature, with experience, I just got better at handling the situations,” he said.
