Gukesh Gifted Mercedes-Benz By His School
GM Gukesh Dommaraju was gifted a car on Saturday at a spectacular celebration held by his school, Velammal Vidyalaya, on their Mel Ayanambakkam campus in Chennai. The world championship challenger turned 18 this year, which means he'll be able to drive after passing his test, though his upcoming World Championship match with GM Ding Liren is a bigger test on the horizon!
Schools everywhere celebrate the successes of their pupils, but few do it with a huge event involving laser and drone shows and the gift of a car worth over $60,000.
In an evening that was absolutely electric, Velammal Nexus felicitated their student Gukesh for his phenomenal achievements - the most notable one being winning the Candidates 2024 and becoming a World Championship Challenger.
— ChessBase India (@ChessbaseIndia) August 11, 2024
Gukesh was gifted a car by his school and guess… pic.twitter.com/x5jt36MnYY
Gukesh's school is part of a network of private Velammal schools in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The network now has over 100,000 students and around 10,000 staff members.
The schools have been an important launch pad for a new generation of chess talent, with grandmaster siblings Praggnanandhaa and Vaishali Rameshbabu among those to have studied there. Gukesh explained to IM Sagar Shah of ChessBase India that the school that hosted the celebration was exactly where his chess journey began: "Exactly the same branch where I studied before and where I started, where I had my first chess class, and where I started chess basically."
When his chess career took off, Gukesh stopped attending regular classes, but the school has followed his progress and used his achievements as an inspiration for others. Gukesh was glad to see so many students getting involved and having fun, commenting: "In that crowd there might be a few kids who take up chess."
He knows the feeling since he still recalls meeting another famous Chennai resident, 15th World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand: "One of my very early memories was Vishy coming to the school, and I got to stand next to him on the stage. I was very young at that time."
The highlight of the recent event was Gukesh being handed the outsized keys of an E-Class Mercedes-Benz. He told Shah:
"It was a pleasant surprise, let's say, to put it very mildly. I was just super happy to see the car. It was my first car, so it's always special, and especially if it's a Mercedes, it's even more special!"
It was my first car, so it's always special, and especially if it's a Mercedes, it's even more special!
—Gukesh Dommaraju
He can't drive it quite yet, since he added, "I've already started learning driving and now I'm even more motivated to learn quickly so I can drive."
Receiving a car has become surprisingly common among talented young chess players. The Uzbekistan team received cars in 2018 for winning the Under-16 FIDE Chess Olympiad, and if it was meant to inspire them, it worked—four years later, they won the full Olympiad in Chennai, and again, they received new cars.
Gukesh's countryman Praggnanandaa was another player whose chess success—reaching the final of the 2023 FIDE World Cup—resulted in the gift of a car, though there was a twist. The car was gifted to Praggnanandhaa's parents!
Appreciate your sentiment, Krishlay, & many, like you, have been urging me to gift a Thar to @rpragchess
— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) August 28, 2023
But I have another idea …
I would like to encourage parents to introduce their children to Chess & support them as they pursue this cerebral game (despite the surge in… https://t.co/oYeDeRNhyh pic.twitter.com/IlFIcqJIjm
As you can see, chess has huge support in India, but the big question this year will be whether India will have a second world chess champion after Anand. Gukesh faces Ding in Singapore from November 20, with $2.5 million and the title at stake. How are his preparations going?
"I can't reveal much right now, but the work is fun! Since the Candidates ended it's been quite a while and I've thought about a few things for the match and yeah, me and my team, we're just trying to do our best and hopefully with everyone's love and support and my efforts and my team's efforts we'll get a good outcome."
Gukesh will next be in action in the 2024 Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, U.S.A., starting Monday, before he represents India in the 45th FIDE Chess Olympiad in Budapest, Hungary, which runs September 10-24.
Colin McGourty led news at Chess24 from its launch until it merged with Chess.com a decade later. An amateur player, he got into chess writing when he set up the website Chess in Translation after previously studying Slavic languages and literature in St. Andrews, Odesa, Oxford, and Krakow.
