Armenia and Georgia win gold at Olympiad

Armenia repeated their Olympic success of two years ago in Turin by winning gold at the 38th Olympiad in Dresden as well. Georgia, led by former world champion Chiburdanidze, won gold in the women's section. Final report with games, results, standings, prize giving and a video the full press conference given by the Armenian team.

Yet again, Armenia became the grandiose winners of the Chess Olympiad by beating the Chinese team in the last round, while Ukraine quite surprisingly lost, no, got smashed by the Americans, who won bronze in similar mission-impossible fashion as two years ago.

Israel took bronzesilver medals and its board one Boris Gelfand won individual silver ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú he was overtaken by Hungary's first board Peter Leko in the last round by the smallest of margins possible: on point in rating performance. Topalov, who was in the race for gold, lost to Shirov in the penultimate round and didn't play in the last ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú he took bronze.

A great result for Armenia who played almost all of their matches with Aronian, Akopian, Sargissian, and Petrosian; the oldest player of the team is actually "board 5" Minasian who played just a single game. Amazingly, in a total of 44, the winners only lost 2 games, which were both scored in their lost match against Israel!

Not only Ukraine underperformed, but what to think of the Russian team, who again didn't win medals. Team captain Alexander Bakh had the highest rated players at his disposal but couldn't get them to find a good team spirit - exactly what the Armenians do have.

Israel did very well, with a mostly young team (and no Sutovsky or Smirin) led by the experienced Boris Gelfand who found his biggest form since the world championship last year. The Netherlands had the same team setting, where Van Wely and four young GMs played quite well. They had excellent chances to draw their last-round match against Israel, but L'Ami couldn't convert an ending with a bishop against two pawns - from hindsight that ending might have always been a draw.

The same success for the Americans was seen in the women's section where they also ended third after beating France 2?Ǭ?-1?Ǭ? in the last round. Ukraine robbed Poland, in clear first, from any medals at all, beating them with the same score but it's Georgia that's going home with the medals of gold, because after their 3-1 victory over Serbia it turned out they had collected just five Sonneborn-Berger points more.

The winning team was led by the legendary former world champion Maia Chiburdanidze who won the gold medal; silver went to Martha Fierro Baquero and third to Hou Yifan (amazingly, the only prize that went to China this year).

Georgia drew with Hungary and Russian and then lost to Poland in round 4 to 6, to drop heavily in the standings. After scoring no less than three 4-0's in a row, versus Spain, Moldova and Slovenia, they got back into the real world and then proved to be able to beat strong teams as well: China 1?Ǭ?-2?Ǭ? and in the last round Serbia 3-1. Except for the Armenians, Chiburdanidze got the biggest applause at the prize giving.

Like their male collegeagues, the Dutch women played slightly better than their starting rank and especially board one Peng played well, but in the last round, like L'Ami, she was a bishop up but couldn't win it. And therefore against Russia they also went down 1?Ǭ?-2?Ǭ?.

And so the 38th Chess Olympiad has come to an end. An Olympiad with a record-breaking number of participating federations: 146 teams in the open section and 111 teams in the women's. And an Olympiad that won't be forgotten easily because of the many rule changes, of which some were clearly more succesful than others.

There were a total of 13,083 paying spectators coming to the venue (cheapest tickets were 4,50 Euro) and the organizers said to have made nearly 50,000 Euros. There were 25,000 liters of mineral water given to the players, 24 tons of food, 24,000 cups of coffee and there were 25,920 overnight stays. The tournament website had 52 million visitors website. Despite some obvious mistakes, which kind of took away a bit of the friendliness sometimes, this Olympiad can be called a successful one. If only Karen Asrian could have enjoyed it.

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Here's the full press conference given by the Armenian team, as well as all other videos from Dresden:

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Results and standings in both the Open and Women's sections:

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Medal winners:

Open section

Board 1: Gold Peter Leko | Silver Boris Gelfand | Bronze Veselin Topalov Board 2: Gold Vladimir Akopian | Silver Paco Vallejo | Bronze Vassilios Kotronias Board 3: Gold Gabriel Sargissian | Silver Vugar Gashimov | Bronze Tiger Hillarp Persson Board 4: Gold Dragisa Blagojevic | Silver Aleksandr Delchev | Bronze Daniel Fridman Board 5: Gold Dmitry Jakovenko | Silver Maxim Rodshtein | Bronze Ferenc Berkes

Women's section

Board 1: Gold Maia Chiburdanidze | Silver Martha Fierro Baquero | Bronze Hou Yifan Board 2: Gold Anna Zatonskih | Silver Natalia Zhukova | Bronze Lilit Mkrtchian Board 3: Gold Nadezhda Kosintseva | Silver Rusudan Goletiani | Bronze Ildiko Madl Board 4: Gold Joanna Majdan | Silver Oleiny Linares Napoles | Bronze Maia Lomineishvili Board 5: Gold Natalia Zdebskaja | Silver Mary Ann Gomes | Bronze Alina Motoc

Here's a selection of round 11 games for replay:









































































Links:

• Official website
• All results and standings
• (Live) games for replay
• ICC's Chess.FM blog with videos and lots of other stuff
• GM Ian Rogers blogging for Chess Life Online
• ChessVibes Photos @ Flickr
• Olimpbase
• TWIC's games in PGN: Men rd 11, Women rd11, Men all, women all