New Delhi, Sep 23 (PTI) “If you had to roll the dice, these are pretty good teams to roll them with.” Viswanathan Anand had a strong hunch that India would go on to be more than within “smelling” distance of gold at the Chess Olympiad this time.

And much to the delight of the revered Grandmaster, who played a key role in shaping some of the brightest youngsters in Indian chess right now, the country swept both the men’s and women’s gold at the 45th Olympiad in Budapest, Hungary.

World Championship challenger D Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi, Vidit Gujrathi, and P Harikrishna decimated competition to clinch the gold in the open section, finishing ahead of top seeds USA and Uzbekistan.

Then Harika Dronavalli, R Vaishali, Divya Deshmukh, Vantika Agrawal, and Tania Sachdev claimed the top honours in the women’s event ahead of Kazakhstan and USA to complete an Indian sweep.

It was a first for the country and it was fitting that Anand, its original superstar of the game, had a role.

Both the teams had fetched bronze medals in the previous Olympiad, which was held on home turf in Chennai. Anand knew they “were smelling the gold” at that time but let it slip in the closing stages.

However, the 54-year-old five-time world champion, in an interview to

Source: PTI News