Chess has travelled a long way and FIDE—the world chess body, which started the first official Olympiad in 1927 in London with 16 countries in the fray, too has reasons to celebrate this success after reposing faith in to pull off this Herculean task in just about four months.
Each FIDE recognized chess association can enter a team into the Olympiad. Each team is made of up to five players, four regular players and one reserve (prior to the tournament in Dresden 2008 there were two reserves). Initially, each team played all other teams, but as the event grew over the years this became impossible. At first, team seeding took place before the competition. Later certain drawbacks were recognized with seeding and in 1976 a Swiss tournament system was adopted.
The trophy for the winning team in the open section is the Hamilton-Russell Cup, which was offered by the English magnate Frederick Hamilton-Russell as a prize for the 1st Olympiad (London 1927). The cup is kept by the winning team until the next event, when it is consigned to the next winner. The trophy for the winning women's team is in the honor of the first Women's World Chess Champion.
FIDE organized the online Olympiads in 2020 and 2021 following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Russia and India were subsequently declared joint winners after several Indian team members experienced connectivity issues due to a global outage of Cloudflare servers in 2020 Online Chess Olympiad.
The 2022 event was originally planned to be held in Minsk, Belarus, but it was rescheduled to Moscow, which originally was host of the 2020 Olympiad, which was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, FIDE made a statement in February 2022 that the tournament will not take place in Russia and will be shifted to Chennai, India.
Five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand is among those expected to be part of the relay. FIDE had said the Olympiad torch relay would always begin from India, the land from which the sport originated from, and will travel across all continents before reaching the host city.
"It is a big opportunity for India that the land where chess originated, it will be hosted in this country. I thank the PM for his endeavor and support".
"Whenever torch relay happens, it will start from India. In 1956, India participated for the first time in Chess Olympiad and then took years to win a medal, but after that, never looked back", he said.
"Today there is immense awareness about sports in the country, thanks to our PM. He is not just a sports enthusiast, sports lover, he is an avid sports fan too who cares about our sports persons".
"India, today, is the fastest growing chess country in the world. It’s a dream to host the Olympiad in India".
Our Prime Minister expresses hope that India will create a new record of medals at 44th Chess Olympiad.
According to Short, it is the right moment for India to make a successful bid and host the biennial team chess event.
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