look news india
Before the prestigious 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad starting in the historical city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan, a big and surprising news has come out from the Indian sports world. Before the start of the tournament, the Indian men’s and women’s chess teams, which landed on Uzbek soil as defending champions, had to face serious managerial negligence right from the start. The Indian players, who reached Samarkand Airport after a long and tiring journey, could not get hotel rooms on time to camp. The situation became so bad that the country’s top grandmasters and players had to wait for about five hours to get the keys to their own rooms. This huge chaos has raised big and serious questions on the management of the tournament organizing committee.
After not getting hotel rooms and not giving any clear information from the local management, the patience of the Indian team members ran out. Indian men’s team captain and experienced grandmaster Srinath Narayanan reacted sharply to this entire incident and vented his anger on the social media platform ‘X’. While posting, he wrote that the experience of FIDE Chess Olympiad 2026 has been very disappointing and bad. Five hours have passed since the team reached Samarkand, but the players have not been allotted rooms yet and there is no clear information as to when the rooms will be available. Apart from Srinath, the country’s star Grandmaster Vidit Gujarati also expressed his displeasure and wrote that the first impression of Samarkand Olympiad has been very bad and he is still waiting to get the rooms.
It is noteworthy that this prestigious Chess Olympiad is the biggest and prestigious team competition in the chess world, in which hundreds of teams from all over the world are participating. This time around 400 teams have come to try their luck in this great competition, breaking the record. This tournament is even more special and prestigious for the Indian team because this time India is defending its title as the defending champion. In the Olympiad held in Budapest in the year 2024, both the Indian men’s and women’s teams created golden history by winning gold medals together for the first time. This time also in the Indian Open category, world champions D. Gukesh, R. Strong players like Praggnananda, Arjun Erigaisi, Nihal Sarin and Vidit Gujarati are included. In the women’s category too, Koneru Humpy, R. Veteran players like Vaishali and Divya Deshmukh have a big responsibility to once again win a gold medal for the country.
Even though the Indian contingent had to face these uncomfortable and poor arrangements related to hotel and accommodation at the beginning of the tournament, the team management and players have made it clear that their entire focus is now on the game only. After the intervention of the organizers and the local chess federation, rooms were finally made available to the players by the evening and everyone heaved a sigh of relief. However, such poor arrangements on the world’s biggest stage have exposed the management of sporting events at the international level. Now leaving behind all the difficulties and the initial mental fatigue, the eyes of crores of sports lovers have once again fixed on the stalwarts like D. Gukesh and Pragyanananda, who are fully prepared to raise the tricolor flag on the chessboard of Samarkand once again.