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Team(s) of the Year: Indian chess announces itself with never-seen-before dominance of Olympiad

India won gold in both the open and women's sections of the 2024 Chess Olympiad. Maria Emelianova/Chess.com

At the 45th FIDE Chess Olympiad in Budapest, Indian chess announced itself in a manner never seen before -- it was pure collective domination.

The key word there is 'collective'. Chess is as individual a sport as it can get. Once a game starts there's no involvement from anyone other than the protagonists, no coaching, no advice no help. It's one vs one in its simplest form but the Chess Olympiad is the ultimate test of a nation's collective chess skill. Teams of five each take on each other and only the strongest remain standing. To explain just how much of the collective is needed to win here, consider this fact -- Bobby Fischer only ever won two Olympiad silvers. Magnus Carlsen has yet to win an Olympiad medal of any colour. India has stood a better chance than the USA of yore, or the Norway of now, for a while now, but all that potential had never really translated to the medal that matters. Before 2024, India had only ever won three medals at a proper over-the-board Olympiad: open bronzes in 2014 and 2022 and women's bronze in 2022).

Then along came these two teams. In the Open section, India was represented by Dommaraju Gukesh, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi, Vidit Gujrathi, and Harikrishna Pentala (Srinath Narayanan was captain). In the women it was Harika Dronavalli, Vaishali Rambabu, Divya Deshmukh, Vantika Agrawal, and Tania Sachdev (Abhijit Kunte was captain).

And they swept all in front of them.

The men romped home by four points, a margin never seen at this tournament. Of the 44 matches they played in Budapest; they lost only one. The women's team had to hold on at times, but pulled through clutch moments like only champions can, coming from behind to take gold as they brought their A-games to the big matches. Four of them won individual golds too: Arjun Erigaisi, Divya Deshmukh, Vantika Agarwal and D Gukesh. The latter had one of the great chess tournaments of all time, beating three players (and drawing one) with 2700+ ratings and becoming only one of only four ever to have crossed 3000 in tournament performance ratings at a major classical chess tournament. (Gukesh would, of course, go on to do something else a little more spectacular later in the year...)

Everyone in the teams contributed in their own way. Through boards one to four, India held their own and then some across both sections. Coming on the heels of having five players at the Candidates, it was an awe-inspiring display that put the chess world firmly, and very officially, on notice: Indian chess is here to slay. Checkmate, macha.

For Indian sports fans, this was simply an epic win. In the domination shown by their teams lay great pride, in their ages (of the five men, three are below 22 years old and of the five women, three are below 23) lay even greater promise.

It's no surprise then that these two chess teams ride away with ESPN India's Team(s) of the Year crown.