Russians hail youngest world champ Gukesh
Russian chess lovers and media commentators have cheered the victory of India’s Gukesh Dommaraju as he became the youngest world chess champion at the age of 18. But some of them have complained that their own country has failed to produce world chess champions, recalling the past Soviet glory.
Dommaraju achieved a decisive victory over his Chinese rival Ding Liren, 32, in Singapore on Thursday. The Chennai native was able to win over his rival from a dead-drawn position in the final battle of their best-of-14-games showdown.
“Gukesh Dommaraju became the world champion at an age at which representatives of previous generations of chess players never dreamed of this title,” daily newspaper Kommersant stated in a full-page story, dedicated to Dommaraju’s victory.
Kommersant sports writer Alexey Dospekhov has even compared the match to Garry Kasparov’s chess battle with another Russian master Anatoly Karpov for the world chess champion title in Seville, Spain, in 1987.
“A victory ‘to order’, when that’s all you need, when your fate depends on it, and your opponent is satisfied with a draw, is almost the highest valour in chess,” Dospekhov said.
The headline on the Sankt-Petersburg Fontanka news site stated: “Gukesh Dommaraju has beaten the record of Garry Kasparov”. The media has reminded its readers that Kasparov became the world chess champion at the age of 22.
But former world chess champion and Kasparov’s bitter rival Karpov was more reserved while speaking about Dommaraju’s victory. “It is difficult to say at the moment whether Gukesh is worthy of the title of world champion, but he played well. Up to a certain point, he played better than Liren. At some point it seemed that the Chinese chess player was seizing the initiative. The result is unique! The youngest world champion, representative of India,” Karpov was quoted by Championat Russian sports portal.
While the Soviet Sport, the country’s leading sports daily, called Dommaraju’s victory “historical”, the paper’s columnist Georgy Gornostayev has also stated that “the Indian’s unique victory is overshadowed by rumours of a match-fixing”.
The rumours were dismissed by Arkady Dvorkovich, the president of the international chess federation (FIDE). “Both chess players are brilliant and deserved to win. But this time the energy of youth turned out to be stronger than depth and experience. No investigation required. Of course it was a fair fight,” he said.
“It was a well-deserved victory. India has won several chess Olympics games,” Boris Shiroky, a 72-year-old chess trainer from Irkutsk, Eastern Siberia, told The Tribune. But an avid chess master, who had witnessed the triumph of Soviet chess, he has also complained about the state of Russian chess. “During the Soviet times we had many chess magazines, today there is only one. So how come we can get the new Vasily Smyslov or Anatoly Karpov,” he said.
Shiroky was echoed by a reader named Alex who left his comment under an article about Dommaraju’s victory carried by Sportbox news portal. “Where are the Russians? What a shame… are there really no talented chess players in Russia? The Soviet chess school was the best in the world,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in September that over one million Russians practise chess on a regular basis. But while the Soviet Union has produced several world chess champions, the modern Russia has not achieved the title.
In 2023, Russian chess master Ian Nepomniachtchi lost the battle for the world crown to Chinese Liren in Astana, Kazakhstan. Russian media reported that Nepomniachtchi posted a crying emoji on his social media page, reacting on Dommaraju’s victory.
