At 18, Gukesh conquers chess world, dethrones China’s Ding to become youngest world champion

New Delhi (TIP)- 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. 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.
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.
“His parents have sacrificed a lot,” Gukesh’s childhood coach Vishnu Prasanna told PTI in April after he became the youngest challenger to the world title as a 17-year-old.
“While his father has almost surrendered his career. His mother has been supporting the family while his father has been travelling, and they hardly get to see each other,” he recalled. Gukesh became the third youngest Grandmaster in the history of chess when he achieved the feat at 12 years 7 months and 17 days. The Chennai-lad is also the third youngest to enter the elite 2700 Elo rating club and the youngest ever to scale the 2750 rating mark.The year 2024 is without a shred of doubt the best of Gukesh’s career. He won the Candidates, was dominant on the top board to take team India to a gold medal in the recent chess Olympiad at Budapest, and the icing on the cake was his world title triumph in Singapore on Thursday, December 12.
His chess journey started with one hour and thrice-a-week lessons in 2013, the year Viswanathan Anand lost his world title to Norwegian maverick Magnus Carlsen.
Multiple-times age group championship winner, Gukesh became an International Master after a tournament in 2017 after a tournament in Cannes, France.
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.