D Gukesh, who became the youngest world chess champion by defeating China's Ding Liren, was raised by parents who gave up their careers for him and did not hesitate to crowd-fund his dreams. Gukesh dreamed of his destiny at the age of seven and turned it into reality in less than a decade. The 18-year-old defeated Liren to become the youngest world chess champion. He hardly made a mistake wherever he competed in this stellar year.
However, Gukesh's journey to the top was not easy and it required sacrifices not only from him but also from his parents. Gukesh's father Rajnikanth is an ENT surgeon while his mother Padma is a microbiologist. Rajnikanth had to stop his medical practice in 2017-18. He gave up work and focused on his son. The father-son duo traveled around the world on a limited budget so that Gukesh could get the exposure he needed. While Gukesh was trying to achieve the final GM norm, his mother became the earning member, taking care of the household expenses.
When Gukesh became the youngest contender for the world title at the age of 17, his childhood coach Vishnu Prasanna said, "His parents have sacrificed a lot. His father has almost given up his career. His mother is bearing the expenses of the family while his father is traveling and they rarely get to see each other." Gukesh became the third youngest grandmaster in the history of chess. He achieved this feat at the age of 12 years seven months and 17 days.
Chennai's Gukesh is the third youngest player to enter the elite 2700 ELO rating club and the youngest to touch the 2750 rating. The year 2024 is no doubt going to be the best year of Gukesh's career. He won the Candidates Tournament, dominated the top board to guide Team India to gold at the recent Chess Olympiad in Budapest, and won the world title in Singapore on Thursday was the crowning achievement for him.
Gukesh's chess journey began with one hour and three lessons in 2013, the year Viswanathan Anand lost his world title to Norwegian legend Magnus Carlsen. A multiple age-group championship winner, Gukesh became an International Master in 2017 after a tournament in France. The young champion's early success includes winning gold medals at the Under-9 Asian Schools Championships and the World Youth Chess Championship in the Under-12 category in 2018. Gukesh's passion for chess forced his parents to stop him from attending full-time school after Class 4.
During a tournament in New Delhi in 2019 Gukesh became the second youngest grandmaster in history, a record that was then only broken by Russia's Sergey Karjakin but was later broken by US-based Indian-origin prodigy Abhimanyu Mishra. In 2022 Gukesh won the individual gold medal playing on the top board for the Indian team and repeated the same in Budapest. In September 2022 he reached a rating of over 2700 for the first time and a month later he also became the youngest player to beat the then world champion Magnus Carlsen.
The next year was also good for him as he crossed the 2750 rating barrier and the only disappointing moment was when he was knocked out in the quarter-finals of the World Cup and the road to the World Championship was closed. However, in December last year, Gukesh got another chance as the Tamil Nadu government organized a closed tournament in which a win meant a ticket to Toronto for the Candidates. The win also made him the third youngest player to qualify for the Candidates Tournament after Bobby Fischer and Magnus Carlsen.
All this while, Gukesh had no sponsors. He had to manage his finances through prize money and parental crowd-funding. Despite several challenges, he surpassed his idol Anand as India's number-one player last year. It was a stroke of fate that Anand was the one who groomed him at the Westbridge-Anand Chess Academy (WACA) which came into being in 2020 during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic that halted most sporting activities.
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