Veteran D Harika had to endure a long wait to realise her dream of winning the prestigious Chess Olympiad title but she was finally glad to have achieved it even though she was not satisfied with her performance in the event in Budapest. India on Sunday scripted history in the Chess Olympiad as its men’s and women’s teams clinched their maiden titles in a rare clean sweep of gold medals after beating Slovenia and Azerbaijan respectively in the final round of matches here.
For the women’s team, Harika, 33, was at her technical best, striking on the top board, while the 18-year-old Divya Deshmukh outclassed Govhar Beydullayeva to confirm her individual gold medal on the third board.
“Definitely for me it is much more emotional than these people (teammates), I have been playing for 20 years to see the gold medal and finally I am glad we saw it,” Harika said.
“I am extremely happy and proud of the girls, youngsters came up in the team and they did extremely well.
“May be my performance is not satisfactory but the team gold made me forget everything, I am glad that we managed to come back strongly after the setback,” she added.
Divya, who won the World Junior Girls’ chess championship in Gandhinagar recently, turned out to be the mainstay for the Indian women’s team that bagged the historic gold medal.
“It started off quite well, but in the middle we had a few setbacks and I am really proud of the way my team and I handled it. We fought back with resilience and we are finally here with the gold medal,” Divya said.
“I am overwhelmed with emotions here, I am really happy. I had a good performance here.” Asked about how she could play all the games with such high energy, Divya said, “It was a do-or-die kind of situation, for your country you have to give it all.” Playing on the third board, Divya ended the event with a stupendous 9.5 points out of her 11 games and her performance also netted her the individual gold medal as the best performer on her board.
Tania Sachdev, who did not get to play many games, helped the team get off to a good start playing on board five.
“This is the moment, I think we were meant for this, last time (when Indian got bronze in both sections, missing the gold narrowly) it did not happen. It was hard to celebrate the bronze last time but I am just so happy right now,” said an emotional Tania, who scored 3.5 points from her five games.
If Divya provided the Midas touch to the Indian team, Vantika Agrawal was in a class of her own scoring 7.5 out of nine and these two basically carried the side forward in almost every round when it mattered.
Vantika also won a gold medal for her individual performance on the fourth board.
For R Vaishali, sister of R Praggnanandhaa, the last four games she played gave her just one point but she had done her main job prior to that, scoring five points from the first six games that laid the foundation for the team’s triumph.
Team captain Grandmaster Abhijeet Kunte was all praise for the team.
“The last two rounds were very crucial, Divya and Vantika played extremely well. Vaishali had some setbacks towards the end. Harika was solid and Tania gave us a good start,” he said.
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