The World Chess Olympiad 2010, the largest national teams event in the sports calendar of FIDE, took place 19th September - 4th October in Khanty Mansiysk, Russia.
More than 150 men and 119 women teams have registered for the Olympiad. A total of 1380 players competed in the two sections. The statistics show that more than 772 titled players will be present, out of them 247 GMs, 63 WGMs, 160 IMs, 87 WIMs, 81 FMs, and 80 WFMs.
The official start of the competition will be given on Monday at 21:30 local time with a spectacular opening ceremony. All rounds start at 15:00 local time, except the last round which starts at 11:00.
Final report
The national men's team of
Ukraine clinched the gold medal at the 39th World Chess Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk after the exciting final round in which top two pairings both played 2-2. Ukraine split the points with Israel, but Russia 1 couldn't benefit on this result as they also played 2-2 versus Spain.
The impressive team of Ukraine (GM Ivanchuk Vassily, GM Ponomariov Ruslan, GM Eljanov Pavel, GM Efimenko Zahar, GM Moiseenko Alexander), who won eight matches and allowed only three ties, took the gold medal by lining the same four players for the last seven rounds. They allowed only three individual losses throughout the event.
Russia 1 (GM Kramnik Vladimir, GM Grischuk Alexander, GM Svidler Peter, GM Karjakin Sergey, GM Malakhov Vladimir) claimed the silver medal with 18 match points. The 5th round defeat against Hungary appears to have took away the gold.
Israel (GM Gelfand Boris, GM Sutovsky Emil, GM Smirin Ilia, GM Rodshtein Maxim, GM Mikhalevski Victor), seeded only 11th, once again surpassed the expectations and took a bronze medal by edging Hungary on better tiebreak scores. Both teams have collected 17 match points. Israel was silver in the 2008 Chess Olympiad in Dresden.
Fantastic
Russia 1 women seccured the gold medal with one round to spare. Even in the " mathematically irrelevant" last round encounter against their compatriots Russia 2, the top-seeded team did not relax, and signed yet another victory to achieve the historic perfect score at the Chess Olympiad.
The winning lineup: GM Kosintseva Tatiana, IM Kosintseva Nadezhda, GM Kosteniuk Alexandra, IM Galliamova Alisa and WGM Gunina Valentina.
Silver is
China with 18 match points (GM Hou Yifan, WGM Ju Wenjun, GM Zhao Xue, WGM Huang Qian, IM Wang Yu).
Third place saw a massive tie of six teams with 16 points each. But the 2008 Olympic champions from
Georgia beat everyone on additional criteria and took a bronze medal.
Russia won the Nona Gaprindashvili Cup, which is given for the best combined score of men and women teams. The runners-up were China, and Ukraine took the third place in this nomination.
It was a great event, maybe the best Olympiad ever. "We must pray for such organizers", said the FIDE Honorary Vice-President Israel Gelfer, and his opinion was more or less accepted by all participants and guests of the competition. Everything from accommodation to transportation and catering was absolutely perfect.
"I was a bit worried when Khanty-Mansiysk won the right to organize the Olympiad two years ago, – said Ali Yazici, President of the Turkish Chess Federation. – Now I am worried whether we manage to organize our Olympiad in 2012 at the similarly outstanding level".
A colorful closing ceremony concluded the Olympiad. Five thousand spectators congratulated the winners and medalists of the competition, who received their trophies from Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, FIDE President, Alexander Zhukov, Chairman of the Russian Olympic Committee, and Natalya Komarova, Governor of Ugra.
Full results and pairings, in addition to interviews, are available on the
official website.
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