Gold and silver. A few hours ago, the World Chess Team Championship in Khanty-Mansiysk ended with a great result for Russia. The Russian girls not only won for the first time but guaranteed their first place in advance, having confidently defeated their rivals from Ukraine. And men, despite the absence of several titled athletes, lost only to the Chinese team. Margarita Semenyuk will talk about the final of the intellectual battle.
These five Russian girls proved their strength and superiority of intelligence. Our compatriots demonstrated undisputed leadership over their rivals during nine rounds of the World Championship. Each victory doesn’t come easy. Moreover, we really wanted to win. Our team won the Olympics three times, we won the European Team Championship five... I can be mistaken, four times. But we have never won the World Team Championship. Alexandra Kosteniuk, Katerina Lagno, Valentina Gunina, Olga Girya, and Aleksandra Goryachkina.
The Russian Women's National Team had the full-strength makeup and was ahead of the following team by four points. In the final round, the Russian chess players, having confidently defeated the Ukrainian women, managed to win the most prestigious chess title of the planet. It was a tough tournament. For the first time in history, our girls won gold. I congratulate everyone with this big victory. Today, our boys performed a feat. They defeated the Olympic champions, the US team, with a score of 4:0 and won silver. Our men's team made wrong moves only in the games with the representatives of China.
However, if they had tied the score with the Chinese, then Russia's double team gold would have been secured. We fought for the first place with the team, with which we expected to fight for the first place, with the team of China. As a result, we will be second, which, of course, is unpleasant. We wanted to be first on our territory, but we lost a key game to them. We lost one game in the whole tournament.
And, unfortunately, it was in the decisive match with China. For the first time, the International Chess Federation decided to hold both women's and men's championships simultaneously, and it was in Khanty-Mansiysk, which is called the capital of Russian chess. Cups, for which the national teams of thirteen world countries fought for ten days, are now near me. Two of them will be taken by the Russian team. Together with our and the Chinese national teams, the women's team from Georgia and the men’s team from Poland, who were third on the pedestal, will also take their cups home.
