Three Indian players — one girl and two boys — won gold and another boy clinched the bronze medal at the recently concluded FIDE Online World Cadets & Youth Rapid Chess Championships.
Woman International Master (WIM) Rakshitta Ravi won gold in the Girls U16 category while Grandmaster (GM) D.Gukesh (U14) and GM Nihal Sarin bagged the top honors in the open category. The bronze medal was won by Mrinmoy Rajkhowa in the U10 open category.
A Class X student of Vellamal Vidyalaya here, Rakshitta smoothly sailed over her Chinese opponent WIM Song Yuxin to clinch the gold medal on Tuesday.
“She was fully immersed in her studies as this year she will taking her board exams. She decided to participate in the championship at the last moment,” Rakshitta’s mother WIM Sai Meera Ravi told IANS.
Rakshitta’s parents — IM T.S.Ravi and Sai Meera — were also promising Indian chess stars once and theirs is the family of chess IMs.
“Since March, Rakshitta was away from chess. She started practicing only five days prior to the world cadet tournament,” Sai Meera said.
“She played very well and twice she bounced back to win after losing a game from a winning position. She kept her cool,” she added.
In the Asian leg of the championship, Rakshitta survived two initial setbacks — losing the first game against two opponents and bouncing back to win against them — to qualify for the World Championship.
According to FIDE, 1,380 young chess players from 114 different countries, divided into three groups (Africa, America, and Asia), took part in the preliminary stage to qualify for the knockout stage.
