India and Russia emerge as co-winners of Chess Olympiad

India and Russia were jointly awarded the 2020 Online Chess Olympiad gold medal after a hectic final round held on Sunday. India was provisionally behind Russia with the score card of 1.5 – 4.5 in the second round with internet disconnection and server malfunction affected the final leading.

Nihar Sarin and Divya Deshmukh had lost internet connection with the server and were declared lost. It turns out Deshmukh was in the winning position right before losing the connection.

The Indian made a formal appeal against the internet complications which lead to an hour long investigation by the review committee of FIDE, thus, awarding gold medals to both the teams. This was the first time Chess olympiad was held online.