Chennai: China annexed the Chess Olympiad gold medal in Norway while India captured the bronze crushing Uzbekistan 3.5-0.5 on Thursday. It was the first time India has won a medal in the Chess Olympiad.

Woman Grandmaster Padmini Rout won the gold medal while Grandmaster K. Sasikiran took home the silver medal.

China defeated Poland 3-1 to claim the gold medal in the 11th and final round. The 19th-seeded Indian open team was tied for the second-third place with Hungary, Russia and Azerbaijan for silver/bronze medal. Finally, on a better tiebreaker score, Hungary clinched the silver and India the bronze, ahead of Russia, Armenia and several other higher-rated teams.

“It is a wonderful performance by the Indian team. Not losing even a single game on the second, third and fourth boards was the most critical aspect for the team,” world number 26 and Indian Grandmaster P. Harikrishna told IANS.

“All the players played well and my hearty congratulations to the team,” Harikrishna said.

Prior to leaving for Norway, an Indian team member told IANS they expected to finish in the top eight.

“It was a great performance to win a bronze in the Olympiad without top players in the team. We are all elated and it was a collective performance from all. Everyone contributed in their own way to make this possible,” R.B. Ramesh, Indian team manager, told IANS.

“We will qualify for the World Team Championship as a result of this performance. We get bronze and Sasikiran wins silver medal on board two! We lost only two games out of 44 games which shows the consistency of our players,” Ramesh added.

Source: http://www.indiawest.com

Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
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