The FIDE online Chess Olympiad 2020 final on 30th August, turned out to be one dramatic affair, as both the finalists India and Russia were announced as joint winners of the tournament following some technical troubles. While it was a moment of rejoice for the Indian contingent, Russian Grandmaster and member of the final team at the Olympiad Daniil Dubov expresses his reproval towards the tournament’s conclusion.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chess Olympiad was hosted online for the first time in its history. During the second round of the final, Nihal Sarin and Divya Deshmukh of the Indian team had faced connectivity issues during their matches, due to an internet outage.
While initially Russia were announced to be the winners, FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich declared both teams as winners. The decision was a moment of rejoice for India, several eyebrows were raised by their fellow gold medallists.
Daniil Dubov expresses his flak towards Chess Olympiad result
World Rapid Chess Champion Daniil Dubov, who was a member of the Russian contingent at the Olympiad final last week, spoke against FIDE’s decision on announcing both countries as joint winners.
“Any important sport event is a failure without a winner. We thought there can be only one gold,” Dubov said in a recent interview.
Both Nihal Sarin and Divya Deshmukh, who lost connection during their matches, were primarily declared as the losers of the second round, before the Indian team had made an appeal to FIDE for reconsidering the decision.
However, Dubov said they would have preferred a rematch against Sarin and Deshmukh, rather than sharing the gold.
The 24 year old continued, “The players were OK with restarting the two last games from move one, but no one has even asked us.”
“We are not a random team and this is not the way we want to win,” he added.
As the final outcome generated some heated debates in the chess fraternity, FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich clears up the reason behind the decision.
“[India] didn’t ask for any specific solution like replaying the games or continuing the games from the moment they were stopped, they just asked for not confirming their losses, leaving it for the appeals committee, for FIDE in general, to decide what to do with this situation,” Dvorkovich spoke to Chess.com a couple of days ago.
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