Uzbekistan, the host nation, won the open gold medals at the 2026 Olympiad, the biennial chess international team tournament, at Samarkand last week in the style of the legendary Soviet grandmasters of long ago. India, the defending champions, were second, Germany a surprise third, and the top-seeded United States fourth.
The hosts led almost from start to finish, with world No 5 Nodirbek Abdusattorov and the world title challenger Javokhir Sindarov their top-board powerhouses. The team recovered swiftly from a single defeat by Germany, and were particularly impressive in crushing Armenia by 3.5-0.5 in the penultimate round. The Uzbekistan government rewarded each of the five players with $200,000 (£178,000), plus $50,000 for the coach Rustam Kasimdzhanov.
India performed in line with their seeding. Putting the world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju, on board four boosted his results but also underlined that Sindarov is the favourite for the coming world championship match. Gukesh was exposed in the final rounds when he was outplayed against both Germany, although he won that game fortuitously, and Hungary.
The final leading scores were: Uzbekistan 20/22 match points; India and Germany 18; USA, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Hungary 17; China, France, Spain, Ukraine and England 16 (206 teams competed).
England’s creditable 12th place, one below their seeding, would have been still higher if a third player had performed at the level of the nine-time British champion Michael Adams, 54, and the Spectator chess columnist Luke McShane, 42, who were both in contention for individual medals right up to the final round. England’s women were 15th against their seeding of 20th, and the combined performance was the best since at least 2018, and probably since 1990.
Russia/USSR, which monopolised Olympiad golds in the second half of the 20th century, have been banned from the last three competitions due to the invasion of Ukraine. If allowed to take part, a team of Ian Nepomniachtchi, Andrey Esipenko, Daniil Dubov, Vladislav Artemiev and Alexander Grischuk would have been contenders.
The potential of Turkey’s Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus stands out. The 15-year-old won the individual silver medal unbeaten and has advanced to No 17 in the live ratings, a similar level to Bobby Fischer at that age and well ahead of current world No 1 Carlsen when he was 15. Here he defeats a rival prodigy, Argentina’s Faustino Oro.
China won the women’s Olympiad ahead of Kazakhstan, India and the US, and did so with its B team. World champion Ju Wenjun, world No 1 Hou Yifan, former title challenger Tan Zhongyi and world No 3 Lei Tingjie all stayed at home, but their substitutes, led by world No 4 Zhu Jiner and 16-year-old Lu Miaoyi, proved highly effective.
For the future, the US is potentially a powerhouse in women’s chess. Its duo of Carissa Yip, 23, and Alice Lee, 16, are both targeting the open GM title and its $100,000 bonus offered by Dr Jeanne Cairns Sinquefield, while new candidates are emerging in Rachael Li, Rose Atwell and Zoey Tang who are all teenagers with 2300+ ratings.
Bodhana Sivanandan broke the world age record for the youngest ever woman grandmaster (WGM). Her 8/11 total, playing all games with no rest days, included six wins, draws against Ukraine’s reigning European champion Anastasiia Hnatyshyn and Georgia’s former World Blitz champion Nana Dzagnidze, both of them current world top 20 players, and a solitary loss to Deysi Cori of Peru due to a time-pressure blunder in a drawn ending.
The 11-year-old Harrow schoolgirl’s record as the youngest ever WGM broke Hou’s 2006 mark by several months, and she also recorded her second norm (of three needed) for the international master (IM) title at open level. For IM, she also needs a 2400 rating against her current 2382, which includes the Olympiad.
Her last-round Olympiad game was a model of what has become her trademark style of a Magnus Carlsen grind.
If she secures her final norm and becomes an IM before her 12th birthday, she will break the all-time female No 1 Judit Polgar’s world age record and also become one of the 10 youngest ever IMs. She is already No 2 among all players born in 2015, behind only Russia’s IM Roman Shogdzhiev, who has been groomed for several years as a potential heir to Anatoly Karpov.
The Guardian’s Matthew Weaver interviewed Sivanandan after her return home. At the end of the Olympiad the youngster talked with Lichess.org’s Theo Wait, while chess.com also covered her achievements in detail.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s new £250,000 a year Supporting Elite Chess Fund document contains no specific provision for rewarding world-record breakers. Maybe it should, as Sivanandan’s IM title and new record could follow as soon as the London Classic, which begins in November.
Sivanandan has just started at secondary school, and that could slow her progress on the chessboard. The advance from IM to GM is difficult, and many talents eventually plateau, which should temper extrapolations of a rise comparable to Polgar and Hou.
Meanwhile Timur Turlov, 38, a Russian-born entrepreneur from Kazakhstan whose company Freedom Holding has a multibillion dollar valuation on the Nasdaq index, was elected as the new president of the world chess body Fide last Saturday.
The previous Fide President, Russia’s Arkady Dvorkovich, had planned to run for a third term but was forced to withdraw due to EU sanctions on his assets and travel visas.
Turlov received 96 votes against 76 for the German businessman Wadim Rosenstein and a surprisingly low 20 for the ticket of Jan Henric Buettner of Freestyle Chess and the ECF’s international director Malcolm Pein. In the run-off ballot they switched to Turlov, who defeated Rosenstein 110-85.
Turlov is young, committed and with proven business skills. However, there could be an immediate problem since Rosenstein has appealed to the court of arbitration for sport over the new president’s eligibility.
4044 1…Bg2+! 2 Kxg2 Rf2+! 3 Kxf2 Qxh2+ 4 Kf3 Qxc2 and wins.
