Logo of 44th FIDE Chess Olympiad
The 44th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE, is to be held in the hotel ‘ Four Points by Sheraton’ in Mahabalipuram, Chennai (India) on the date of 28th July - 10th August 2022. It is the first time India will host a Chess Olympiad. It will be the first big - ticket chess event to be held in the country after the 2013 world championship match between GM Vishy Anand & GM Magnus Carlsen.
How did India get the opportunity as a host ?
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Initially, the event was supposed to take place in Khanty - Mansiysk, which hosted the Chess Olympiad 2010. FIDE later decided to host the event in Moscow. But due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Feb 2022, FIDE stripped all the hosting rights from the country. So the news of finding a new host broke out. The secretary general of All India Chess Federation (AICF) Mr. Bharat Singh Chauhan took this condition in his hand and asked the FIDE president, Arkady Dvorkavich to host the event in India. On 25th February 2022, firstly Gujarat & Delhi were considered as the venues but later on Mr. Chauhan & Indian coach GM Srinath Narayanan met Tamil Nadu’s chief minister Mr. M.K. Stalin. He offered an amount of INR 75 crores assurance to conduct the event. It was all done in a very short period of time.
Teams participation
FIDE is excited to announce the participating teams of the 44th Chess Olympiad. There will be 187 teams in the open section and 162 teams which will gather in Chennai.
The open section :-
The women's section :-
The Indian team
Recently the Indian team was announced for the event. India being the host nation get 2 teams for open and women's section.
This is A team of India. Here are the team member - GM Vidit Gujarati (2723), GM Harikrisha Pentala (2705), GM Arjun Eragaisi (2675), GM S.L.Narayanan (2662), GM K.Sasikiran (2651). The A team records with the average ELO rating of 2683 with an average age of 29 years.
Moving on to the B team, we have a team of youngsters. GM Nihal Sarin (2646), Gm D.Gukesh (2659), GM Adhiban (2616), GM R.Praggnananda (2642), GM Ronak Sadhvani (2619). The average ELO rating is 2636 with an average age of just 19 years.
Lets take a look at the women's A team. We have, GM Koneru Humpy (2586), GM Harika Dronvalli (2517), IM Vaishali.R (2409), IM Tania Sachdev (2399), IM Bhakti Kulkarni (2370). The average ELO rating of this group is 2456 with average age of 30 years.
The B team consist of, WGM Vantika Agarwal (2371), IM Soumya Swaminathan (2358), WGM Gomes Mary Ann (2349), IM Padmini Rout (2348), WGM Divya Deshmukh (2313). The average ELO rating here is 2348.
Here we have the coaches of India, for the A team we have GM Srinath Naryana who is also the coach of Arjun Erigaisi and will be the captain of A team. GM R.B.Ramesh will be the coach of young team, he has also trained GM R.Praggnananda. We have GM Abhijit Kunte whos is the coach of women's A team, he was also the trainer when the team won world team championship silver in 2021. We have GM Swapnil Dhopade who is the trainer of women's B team who is also very experienced and been the trainer of Indian team for several events.
GM Anand vs GM Gelfand inworld chess championship, 2010
The 5 times world champion GM Vishy Anand will be the mentor of the team India who is trained with the team from 7th - 17th May with GM Boris Gelfend.
The FIDE has also said that there are chances that India could get an opportunity of bring 3rd team for both the open and women's section, if the no. of entries goes odd but India has officially not announced any other team for the event.
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