India won the Open and Women’s Olympiads in Budapest, while for the first time in history no European team reached the podium in either event
India’s domination of the 188-team Budapest Olympiad was complete. Their winning Open score of 21/22 was a record, they finished four points clear of the chasing pack, while their four individual golds included a 3000+ rating performance by Gukesh Dommaraju, 18, who challenges for the world crown in November.
It was a seminal moment in chess history, comparable to the 1945 USA v USSR radio match when the Americans, quadruple Olympiad gold winners in the 1930s, were crushed 15.5-4.5 to launch 45 years of Soviet supremacy, interrupted only by Bobby Fischer.
India’s superiority was reminiscent of the legendary USSR teams of the 1950s and 1960s, which were packed with world champions and challengers and rarely lost a game, let alone a match. In Gukesh and Arjun Erigaisi, 21, India have what could prove to be the Mikhail Botvinnik and Vasily Smyslov or Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov of the 2020s and 2030s.
For the first time in any Olympiad, no European team reached the podium in either the Open or the Women’s event, although fifth to 23rd places in the Open were all taken by European squads.
Yagiz Erdogmus v Nikita Meshkovs, Turkey v Latvia, Budapest Olympiad 2024. White to move and win.
Gukesh and Erigaisi, who won the boards one and three golds, scored at a pace that even Magnus Carlsen was unable to match. The Norwegian’s ambition of eliminating one of the few gaps in his career record remains unfulfilled, as he had to settle for top board bronze.
Gukesh is now up to No 5 in the world rankings, while Erigaisi has jumped to No 3. Both are poised to pass the 2800 rating landmark as soon as this weekend, when they are scheduled to play for Düsseldorf in the opening two rounds of the German Bundesliga. Games are due to start at 1pm BST on Saturday and 10am on Sunday.
On Wednesday, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, received the two Indian teams at his residence to congratulate them on their achievement, while Gukesh’s win against China’s Wei Yi has been awarded the Olympiad Best Game prize.
If Gukesh fails to reach 2800 this weekend, he will surely do so during his $2.6m world championship match against China’s Ding Liren, which opens in Singapore on 25 November. Ding will start the 14-game series winless in classical chess since 27 January, when he defeated Max Warmerdam in round 12 of Wijk aan Zee. The latest odds are Gukesh 2/5, Ding 9/5, and the contrast is obvious and acute with 2018, when Ding won Olympiad team and individual gold for China.
If Gukesh and Erigaisi can continue their rating advance deep into the 2800s, then Carlsen’s current No 1 mark of 2830 could become a realistic target in a year or two, despite rating deflation.
Vishy Anand, world champion from 2007 to 2013, was the inspiration for India’s success. Anand mentored several of the players, and was on hand to witness the decisive moments. The result was redemption for the 2022 Olympiad at Chennai, when on home ground India faltered in the final rounds and were passed by Uzbekistan. This time Uzbekistan settled for bronze behind India and the United States, still an excellent result for its young team and its world No 6, Nodirbek Abdusattorov.
For the US, who lost to the winners and also had a costly defeat against Ukraine, the lingering unanswered question is whether they could have won gold if Hikaru Nakamura had chosen to compete in Budapest instead of streaming his commentaries. Nakamura identified Wesley So as a weak link, but the former Filipino, after a shaky start, scored the win against China which ensured silver medals for the US.
Final leading Olympiad scores were India 21/22 match points, United States 17, Uzbekistan 17. China, Serbia and Armenia also totalled 17 points, but had worse tiebreaks.
England, seeded eighth, ended up 20th on 15/22. The eight-time British champion Michael Adams, now aged 51, was the highest scorer with an unbeaten 6/9, while the former Russian Nikita Vitiugov on top board was restricted to a 50% score in which his two wins were scored against weaker opposition in the first and last rounds.
England’s team is ageing, and although the youngest ever English grandmaster, Shreyas Royal, 15, can expect a callup for the next Olympiad at Tashkent 2026, that will only solve the problem on one board. There are many other promising English juniors, but none of them appear to have the potential to become 2500s in the next two years. A special incentive may be needed, similar to Jim Slater’s 1973 offer of substantial rewards for new British grandmasters.
India won the Women’s Olympiad with 18/22. Kazakhstan, also with 18 but an inferior tiebreak, took silver and the United States won bronze on 17. Carissa Yip, 21, and Alice Lee, 14, both won board medals for the US, and that could well be a benefit of the Cairns Chess Queens award of $100,000 each for the first five US female players who becomes a grandmaster at Open level in the next five years. Irina Krush, the longtime US No 1, has already received it.
Jovanka Houska was England’s best scorer on 8/10, while Lan Yao and Harriet Hunt also bettered 64%. The bottom boards underperformed, and there was a tendency for defeats to come in pairs, but further experienced players and rising talents will be available in 2026 to confirm the ongoing improvement in English women’s chess.
The chess elite will come to London next month when the franchise-based six-team Tech Mahindra Global League is played at Friends House, Euston, from 3-12 October. World champions Carlsen and Anand, the world No 2, Nakamura, and the double world title challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi will all lead teams. The Olympiad hero, Erigaisi, is also competing.
The time limit is rapid chess, 20 minutes per player per game, with the added bonus for spectators that there is no per-move increment, implying some exciting time scrambles. Daily and season tickets are available from the Chess and Bridge shop in Baker Street, or online.
3939: 1 R7e6! so that if fxe6 2 Ne7+ and 3 Qxg6+ wins. The game ended 1…Qxe6 2 Rxe6 fxe6 3 Nxd6 Rxd6 4 Qg6+ Kf8 5 Qf6+ Kg8 6 f5 hxg3 7 Qg6+ Kf8 8 fxe6 1-0. At Budapest, Erdogmus became the first player ever to reach a 2600 rating at age 13.
Since the beginning of 2024, medicines produced in India have accounted for 8.3% of the total volume of medicines imported to Ukraine.
The State Service for Medicinal Products and Drug Control (Goslexluzhba) informed Interfax-Ukraine that since the beginning of 2024, 3213 series (32824807 packages) from 65 Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers have been submitted for state quality control, which makes up 8.3% of the total volume of medicines imported to Ukraine.
At the same time during 2022-2023 10924 series of medicinal products manufactured in India were submitted for state quality control, including 4715 in 2022 and 6209 in 2023, which is 54705914 and 51309132 packages respectively.
In addition, the State Service of Medicinal Products with reference to the data of the State Register of Medicinal Products reported that since the beginning of 2024 Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers have registered in Ukraine a little more than 100 drugs (excluding active pharmaceutical ingredients, API – IF-U), currently in Ukraine are registered 1999 drugs manufactured in India, in 2023 in Ukraine were registered 1895 Indian drugs, in 2022 – 1709, in 2021 – 1472, in 2020 – 1165.
Thus, the dynamics of registration of Indian medicinal products in Ukraine over the last five years is slowing down: if the number of registered medicinal products manufactured in India in 2021 was 26.2% higher than a year earlier, then at the end of 2023 – only by 10.9%.
World central banks in July, according to preliminary estimates of the World Gold Council (WGC), increased the amount of gold in their gold reserves by 37.1 tons.
The largest buyers were Poland (14.3 tons), Uzbekistan (9.6 tons) and India (5.4 tons). Jordan (4.3 tons), Turkey (3.8 tons), Qatar (2.3 tons), Czech Republic (1.6 tons), Egypt and Malta (0.1 tons each) also increased their reserves
Kazakhstan (3.9 tons) and Mongolia (0.7 tons) sold gold.
“Central banks have remained committed to hoarding gold in recent months. While the overall level of demand cooled slightly as the gold price continued to rise to new highs, it nevertheless remained positive,” WGC analyst Krishan Gopaul said in a review.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to visit India “on a mutually convenient occasion,” the relevant 32nd paragraph concludes the joint statement of Ukraine and India following the prime minister’s visit to Kiev.
“It is quite natural that on such occasions he (Modi) extends an invitation, which he did in this case. So we expect that the moment it suits him, President Zelensky will visit India,” Indian Foreign Minister Subramanyam Jaishankar commented on the invitation at a press briefing in Kiev on Friday.
As reported, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev on Friday. This is the first visit of an Indian prime minister to Ukraine since the latter gained independence in 1991.
India imported $3.13 billion worth of gold in July 2024, the country’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry said. This is 11% less than in July last year, but 2% more than in June this year.
Demand for gold in India both this year (the season of purchases – August-December), and in the long term can grow significantly due to the reduction of customs duties, says World Gold Council analyst Kavita Chako. Duties on gold have been reduced from 15% to 6%, on gold doré – from 14.35% to 5.35% – such a sharp decline has never been. Moreover, for almost 11 years the duties have never fallen below 10%. The changes came into force on July 24.
In total for 7 months of the year gold imports to India amounted to $22.234 billion, which is 12% more than the result of the corresponding period last year. India is one of the largest consumers of gold in the world, practically not producing it itself.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to pay a historic visit to Ukraine in a few weeks, according to Sidhant Sibal, chief diplomatic correspondent for the Indian publishing house WION, citing his own sources in New Delhi. This visit, which is currently being prepared, is tentatively scheduled for the third week of August, probably on the 23rd.
Earlier this year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy personally invited the Indian leader to visit the country during a phone conversation. Since then, the two countries have been holding active high-level talks. Indian Foreign Minister Subramanyam Jaishankar and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba discussed bilateral relations. National security advisors from both countries, Ajit Doval from India and Andriy Yermak from Ukraine, also held talks.
In June, Prime Minister Modi met with President Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Italy. Discussing the current situation in Ukraine, the Indian leader emphasized the need for dialogue and diplomacy, stressing that India is ready to support a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
This visit will be the first personal contact between the two leaders since the beginning of the war, outside the format of the G7 summits. Prime Minister Modi may travel to Ukraine via Poland, and is likely to hold talks with the Polish leadership before traveling to Kyiv.
Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Ukraine comes almost two months after he traveled to Russia for the annual Russian summit, during which the war in Ukraine was also discussed. During his talks with Putin, Prime Minister Modi expressed regret over the deaths of innocent people and children at the Okhmatdyt hospital.
