India and Russia were declared joint winners of Fide Online Chess Olympiad on Sunday. After a lost connection and two forfeited games.
The grand finale was followed by a 64,000-plus strong audience. However ended as a technical glitch forced the Fide president to pass an equitable judgment as India registered their first-ever triumph at Olympiad level.
While the officials said these were “unprecedented circumstances”.
Teams from more than 160 countries have participated in this year’s online event, which began in July.
“The Online Chess Olympiad has been impacted by a global internet outage, that severely affected several countries, including India. Two of the Indian players have been affected and lost connection, when the outcome of the match was still unclear,” Arkady Dvorkovich, president of the International Chess Federation, said in a statement.
He said he decided to award both teams gold medals in the “absence of a unanimous decision” from the body’s appeals committee.
But the final is not the first time the tournament has come under scrutiny.
Nihal Sarin and Divya Deshmukh lose connection with the server and were declared to have lost on time. Notably, Deshmukh had been in a winning position before the loss of connection in the final round.
Incidentally, quarterfinale victory of India against Armenia had also similar complaints of a server lose. Armenian players had appeal saying they had lost internet connection but the appeal had been turned down. India then beat Poland in the semifinal to qualify for Sunday’s final.