India's men's and women's teams created history on Sunday (September 22) winning their maiden gold medal at the 2024 FIDE Chess Olympiad in Hungary. Two players from the team, R Praggnanandhaa and his sister Vaishali returned home today early in the morning in Chennai and received a warm welcome from their fans at the airport.
Praggnanandhaa termed the achievement of both men's and women's teams as historic as not many countries have won it at the same time. He reckons that this achievement from both teams will make chess popular among more people in the country. "Both the men's and women's teams won the Gold Medal.
"This is a very historic achievement and there are very few teams who have won both medals at the same time and we are winning for the first time. This is a very proud moment for all of us... I think this win will take chess to more people," he said.
For the unversed, apart from Praggnanandhaa, the men's team had champion players like D Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi, Vidit Gujrathi and Pentala Harikrishna triumphing while the women's team players comprised, Harika Dronavalli, R Vaishali, Divya Deshmukh, Vantika Agarwal and Tania Sachdev.
This is India's first ever gold medal at the Olympiad but very few are aware that the men's team had shared the medal with Russia during an online Olympiad held during COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the women's team had previously won the bronze medal at the Chennai Olympiad in 2022.
Apart from the team, D Gukesh and Arjun Erigaisi won individual gold medals in boards 1 and 3 while Divya Deshmukh and Vantika Agarwal won boards 3 and 4 to take the individual gold medal tally to 4 for India.
