Nurtured by parents who put their careers on hold for his growth and didn't hesitate to seek crowd-funding for his dreams, D Gukesh manifested his destiny as a seven-year-old and turned it into reality in just over a decade's time.
Rajinikanth had to stop practice in 2017-18 as the father-son duo travelled across the world on a shoe-string budget when Gukesh chased the final GM norm, while his mother became the primary breadwinner, taking care of the household expenses.
Taking forward the incredible legacy of the great Viswanathan Anand, Gukesh became only the second Indian to clinch the coveted prize after the iconic player, who owned the crown five times in his career.
After settling into "semi-retirement", the 55-year-old Anand, incidentally, played a pivotal role in shaping Gukesh at his chess academy in Chennai.
The 18-year-old defeated Ding Liren of China to become the youngest ever world chess champion capping a fabulous year in which he has hardly put a foot wrong wherever he has shown up to compete. But the journey to the top hasn't been the easiest ride and has involved sacrifices not only from him but also his parents -- ENT surgeon Dr Rajinikanth and Padma, a microbiologist.
Early success of the young champion included gold-winning performance in under-9 Asian school championship and the World Youth Chess Championships in 2018 in the Under 12 category. Gukesh's passion for the 64-square chess board prompted his parents to stop him from attending school full-time after Class IV.
It was in 2019 during a tournament in New Delhi that Gukesh became the second youngest Grandmaster in the history, a record that was then surpassed by only Sergey Karjakin of Russia but was later also broken by Abhimanyu Mishra, the Indian origin talent from USA. The writing was on the wall in 2022 when Gukesh won an individual gold medal playing on top board for the Indian team, a performance he repeated at Budapest again.
Despite the many challenges, he went on to overtake his idol Anand as India's no.1 last year. And it was a stroke of destiny that Anand was the one who went on to polish him in the Westbridge-Anand Chess Academy (WACA) that came into existence in 2020 during the peak of COVID-19 pandemic, which had put a halt to most sporting activities.
On Thursday, the lanky teenager, whose poker face while playing is the talk of the chess world, took the legacy of his mentor forward and repaid the sacrifices of his parents in every sense of the word.
(With PTI inputs)
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