India and Russia are the Online Chess Olympiad champions. The world class governing body FIDE declared the two finalists the joint winners. They did so after internet connectivity issues affected at least two games in the second match.
Olympiad dates back to 1924, and is the biggest team championship in chess. It took place online for the first time due to the on-going pandemic.
In the second match of the final, Divya Deshmukh was winning against Polina Shuvalova. Nihal Sarin could have drawn with Andrey Esipenko. Both the Indians got disconnected and thus lost the games, on time.
If India had secured 1.5 points from those games, the second match also would have been drawn (3-3) like the first one. In that case, the Armageddon (tie-breaker) would have come into play, as it did in India’s semi-final against Poland on Saturday.
Indian team management made an appeal to FIDE, requesting a solution. Finally, FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich decided that both the countries should receive the gold medal.
The Indian team: Vidit Gujrathi (captain), Viswanathan Anand, Pendyala Harikrishna, Koneru Humpy, Dronavalli Harika, R. Vaishali, Bhakti Kulkarni, Nihal Sarin, R. Praggnanandhaa, Aravindh Chithambaram, R. Vaishali, Bhakti Kulkarni, Divya Deshmukh and Vantika Agrawal.