Young champions are back

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, APRIL 3. India never has had such a high percentage of success in a continental championship in any individual discipline. Five golds, a silver and a bronze from six categories of the Asian Youth chess championship, quite fittingly, complimented India's growing domination in the age-group championship at Teheran on Sunday.

Three of the five titlists - Tania Sachdev (girls under-14), Abhijeet Gupta (boys under-12) and V.K. Sindhu (girls under-10) - reached the Capital on Monday while International Master P. Harikrishna (boys under-14), M. Abhinav (boys under- 10), silver- winner G. Rohit (boys under-12) and bronze-medallist S. Swaminathan (girls under-12) headed homeward from Bahrain.

The gold medallists now not only enjoy a direct seeding into the World championship to be held in Spain later this year but will also be given a place in the next Asian championship.

Tania, Abhijeet and Sindhu were presented to the Capital's mediapersons at a hurriedly-organised meeting here. The presence of a large number of journalists and lensmen almost embarrassed these young, shy champions. Tania, who has done remarkably well despite lacking systematic and quality coaching in this part of the country, was understandably more comfortable since media focus is nothing new to this local girl.

Tania, seeded second behind Dinara Tuitebaeva of Kazakstan, raised her tally to seven points by winning the last two rounds and then pipped the latter due to superior tie-break score after the Buchollous system was applied to finalise the standings.

``I was confident of winning (the last two rounds) but was not too sure of Dinara's tie-break score,'' was how Tania put it after being ``satisfied'' with her record of five wins and four draws in the championship.

Sponsored by U.S.-based Hughes Software Systems, Tania is aiming to chase the Woman International Masters norms, the first of which she missed by just half-point at the senior Asian championship at Udaipur in January. A student of Modern School (Vasant Vihar), which, in a truly inspiring-gesture, has so far extended financial assistance to the tune of Rs. 2.15 lakh, Tania has now understood the importance of strenuous, systematic coaching and is seeking just that.

For Sindhu, who notched seven straight victories before drawing the last two rounds in the 10-player round-robin field, her maiden international title was indeed very special. This Madurai- based talent, who needs to be encouraged with adequate sponsorship support at the earliest, travels to Bangalore to train under former National champion Raja Ravishekhar for almost a week every month. At Madurai, P.T. Sethuraman coaches her for around three hours during weekdays and two more on weekends.

A fifth standard student of Dolphin Public School, Sindhu began competitive chess in 1997 and her best finish came in the National (under-9) championship at Auragabad recently when she finished runner-up. Sindhu also remains the youngest Indian ever to stun a `Grandmaster', Toni Najdoski from Macedonia, at the Commonwealth championship at Sangli in February.

Like Sindhu, Abhijeet, too, had ensured the title with a round to spare. A class six student of Emmanual Mission Secondary School, Bhilwara, Abhijeet has been winning the Rajasthan State (under- 16) title since 1996. At the National age- group championship, Abhijeet won the under-8 and under-10 titles in 1996 and 1997, respectively, and also became the youngest Indian to get into FIDE's rating list in July 1997. Last year, he added the Commonwealth (under-12) and Asian (under-10) titles in April and December. This is the first time Abhijeet is winning an international title outside India.

According to the team manager, Mr. Vinod Sharma, the performance of Harikrishna, the country's youngest International Master, was on expected lines, but Rohit was a revelation. Rohit's tally of 6.5 points for the boys under-12 silver was a commendable effort. Similarly, S. Swaminathan, who tallied 6.5 points to tie for the second place before slipping to the third spot owing to inferior tie-break score, also displayed a lot of grit, observed Mr. Sharma.

There is no doubt that the time is just right for these champions to be provided with sponsorship support so that these gains could be consolidated in times to come.

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