Ding Liren.
| Photo Credit: AP
Tell me, Grandmaster, how can a Western European Grandmaster lose to a Chinaman?
Dutch Grandmaster and writer Jan Hein Donner thus requested Gudmundur Sigurjonsson, an Icelandic participant, through the Chess Olympiad at Buenos Aires in 1978, after the latter misplaced to Qi Jingxuan. Donner was truly attempting to console Sigurjonsson, however these weren’t in all probability the aptest of phrases to do it.
China defeated Iceland 3-1 in that match, within the opening spherical. That was fairly a shock – for that point, that’s.
Today, Iceland is ranked forty fourth on the earth, whereas China is third. And China holds the World title for each women and men.
Ding Liren profitable the World chess championship at Astana on Sunday is probably the culminating level for the Big Dragon Project.
The venture was proposed in 1974 by prime chess officers of some Asian nations to take the sport within the continent to the very best degree globally. China was chosen as the primary nation because it was felt the potential was probably the most there. The major man behind the venture was Dato Tan Chin Nam, the president of the Malaysian Chess Federation, rich businessman and philanthropist. The goal was to make Chinese chess world class by the top of the century.
If the venture had been considered earlier, China wouldn’t have been a candidate in any respect. Chess had been banned in China through the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), a socio-political motion that acted in opposition to the bourgeois parts. It was solely in 1974 that the ban on chess was lifted.
China, it appeared, was decided to make up for the misplaced time. Backed by the Chinese authorities and Tan, chess grew quickly within the nation.
In 1990, China received the ladies’s bronze medal on the Chess Olympiad. The following yr, Xie Jun turned the ladies’s World champion, ending a 64-year reign of European nations. Five different Chinese girls have gone on to win the World championships. China received the ladies’s gold on the Chess Olympiad 4 instances in a row, whereas the boys received the silver as soon as.
To return to Donner’s query a couple of Grandmaster dropping to a Chinaman: He came upon how in that very Olympiad. He misplaced to China’s Liu Wenzhe.
After dropping the sport which is named the Chinese Immortal, Dooner mentioned, “Now 800 million Chinese people will know my name.”
He couldn’t have imagined that a couple of a long time later each the female and male World chess champions can be talking Chinese.
