Chess Olympiad 2024: List of all men's winners over the years
The 45th Chess Olympiad 2024 is currently underway in Budapest, Hungary, and teams from leading chess-playing nations are competing as victors in the elite event. The event got underway on September 10 and will conclude September 23.
Before the start of the 45th Chess Olympiad 2024, Russia (and formerly the Soviet Union) had the most number of Olympiad titles won with 24 victories to their name.
India has only won one Chess Olympiad title to date, with that victory coming in the 2020 online Chess Olympiad. However, it was a joint title shared with Russia. India was retrospectively awarded that joint title as many members of its team faced connectivity issues while playing caused by the global outage of Cloudflare servers. India has also won bronze medals at the 2014 and 2022 editions of the Chess Olympiad.
The 45th Chess Olympiad 2024 will see a total of 196 teams compete in the open section and another 184 compete in the women’s section. The teams, which will play 11 matches each, will play in the Swiss System, which consists of 11 rounds.
India will send its highest-ranked team to the 45th Chess Olympiad 2024. Team India will feature heavyweights such as the World No. 4 Arjun Erigaisi (ELO rating 2778), world No. 7 D Gukesh (ELO rating 2764), world No. 12 R Praggnanandhaa (ELO rating 2750), world No. 24 Vidit Gujrathi (ELO rating 2720), and world No. 41 P Harikrishna (ELO rating 2686).
Chess Olympiad 2024: List of all men's winners
The Chess Olympiad started in 1924 after a failed attempt to include the sport in the ongoing Summer Olympic Games. However, the first unofficial Chess Olympiad was held in Paris that year, and the first ‘official’ Chess Olympiad took place three years later in London. Since then, the event has taken place every two years.
Czechoslovakia won the first unofficial Chess Olympiad title, while Hungary clinched the first official Chess Olympiad title. Since then, countries like the Soviet Union (later, Russia), the United States, Germany, and the erstwhile Yugoslavia have dominated the upcoming Chess Olympiads.
The Women’s Chess Olympiad was started by FIDE in 1957, with the Soviet Union emerging as the first winners. However, since 1976, the women’s event was hosted as a part of the overall Chess Olympiad event.