CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu state government, along with the All India Chess Federation, on Wednesday announced that India has won the bid to host FIDE Chess Olympiad 2022 in Chennai.
The tentative dates for the FIDE Chess Olympiad 2022 are from 26th July running through to 8th August.
After the FIDE declared that it is pulling the FIDE Chess Olympiad 2022 out of Russia due to the ongoing war situation, the world scrambled to take up this opportunity to bid for the prestigious event. It took tremendous effort and coordination on part of all the officers involved in the government of Tamil Nadu, the team at AICF and the personal interest of the state Chief Minister MK Stalin for India to come up with the winning bid.
In a period of exactly 10 days, from the announcement by FIDE about it looking for new hosts, the AICF co-ordinated with the government of Tamil Nadu to have various approvals within hours to request to bid as the host.
In the previous 43 times that the official FIDE Chess Olympiad has been organised since 1927 India has never hosted this prestigious event. The state takes pride to host the 44th FIDE Chess Olympiad 2022 and will be working towards making it one of the best ever organised chess event. In this event, Chennai will be hosting about 2,000 participants from over 200 countries to compete for the top prize.
The government of Tamil Nadu has always been a big patron of chess. From promoting chess in schools, providing the required infrastructure for chess tournaments, to felicitating chess players with cash awards, the state government has taken all possible steps. Last year the state government felicitated 14 players of the state who have won Gold in FIDE Online Olympiad 2020, FIDE World Teams 2019, Bronze in FIDE Online Olympiad 2021, along with the newly minted Grandmaster, Woman Grandmaster and International Master with a cash award of Rs 19.8 million. Such initiatives have given us tremendous results with 24 of the 73 GMs of India such as GM Praggnanandha, GM Gukesh, GM Adhiban, GM Srinath and the world famous GM Vishwanathan Anand hail from Tamil Nadu.
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