The Unfinished Chronicles Edition 5
I will be doing a series on the Chess Olympiad, and the rosters of the different teams and their chances over the summer. I am starting this series with an article on Norway and the United States of America. Let's start with the reigning champions, the United States of America. The team will be the same as last time, with Wesley So, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Sam Shankland, and Ray Robson. The difference is that Caruana is now the World Championship Challenger, Shankland is now a 2700+ player, and Robson is older and has more experience. The United States are considered to be the favorites and John Donaldson, the Team Captain spoke about their chances. "I like the U.S. team’s chances of being only the second country besides Armenia to repeat as champions in the post-Kasparov era. It won’t be easy as Russia and China will also field teams with similar average ratings to the U.S. and India (with Anand), Azerbaijan and Ukraine will be over 2700 average rating per board. It’s really great Fabiano is back again heading the team. The Olympiad should be the perfect final tune-up before the World Championship. It also helps our chances that we have the entire team back from 2016 and Sam Shankland has recently made a huge leap forward." I decided to do some research on this topic and found this documentary from November 2017, called "Path to Gold". I highly recommend you watch it as it is very high quality, being from the World Chess Hall of Fame, and it is only 13 minutes long.
I took some quotes from this documentary that I found important. The main thing that was very important for the US's success and will be interesting to see if they can repeat was working very well together. “Even the top players were all rooting for each other, which was really important and that’s not something that’s always there in big team competitions when the top players compete with each other, but in our case there was indeed very good chemistry, people were rooting for each other, people were supporting each other, even if someone had a tough game, a tough loss, still there was a lot of support, everyone wanted each other to do well, and it was a great environment to be in.”, said Aleksandr Lenderman, the team coach. They also learned and developed as a team and helped accommodate to each other's needs. “I think the important thing about the Olympiad is it showed us how to work together, how to share ideas with each other, how to learn from the strengths and weaknesses of each member of the team.”, said Wesley So, Board 2 of the winning team in Baku 2016. Russia was the top seed as they have dominated chess (in different forms, at times as the Soviet Union or USSR) for the most part of the last thirty years. However, they haven't been successful lately and that is why I don't think they have as good of a chance as of course the US, but also China, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. “We all were able to put that aside and just focus on the task at hand and I think that’s one reason for example when you look at a team like Russia which has probably had the best team, give or take, for the past twenty years, they haven’t won in quite a while now and I think that’s because they don’t have the team chemistry and they’re not able to jell as well.”, said Board 3 Hikaru Nakamura in the documentary. The United States of America also surprised some as to how well Nakamura, Caruana, and So were able to work together. “I think that some people had their doubts because they know that Hikaru and Fabiano and Wesley are the best of the best but they weren’t sure because they are such three unique individuals with such different personalities and they’re not BFFs in real life, some people had their doubts about that and it was just so wonderful to prove the doubters wrong and show how in the end these three very different individuals could lead the team to victory.”, said Jennifer Shahade, a popular commentator and former player, on the topic. The teams were set up very well, with John Donaldson, who has captained American teams for a very long time, and Aleksandr Lenderman, who, in my opinion doesn't have nearly the strength of the players on the team, but was able to give them some very good advice and opening preparation. “I really appreciate a lot the work of Alex Lenderman who was probably the best coach I’ve ever had in terms of just supplying opening analysis. He’s also one of our competitors at the US Championship and he wasn’t shy at all about sharing all of his best analysis with the team and of course John Donaldson, the team wouldn’t work without him, he’s our captain and he did a great job as well.”, said Sam Shankland, Board 4 and current US Chess Champion. On the women's side, Coach Robert Hess and Captain Yasser Seirawan, who played in ten olympiads himself, did a great job too. Seirawan will be replaced by Melikset Khachiyan for this year's Olympiad in Batumi. 'USA is a team to watch out for in the ladies' section in Batumi, without a doubt', wrote Alejandro Ramirez, a popular commentator and player, in an article for New in Chess magazine. Tatev Abrahamyan will be playing on the team again after missing the 2016 Baku Olympiad due to tension between the host country, Azerbaijan, and her country of birth, Armenia. Young phenom Jennifer Yu will replace Nazi Paikidze, the reigning US Women's Chess Champion, who declined her invitation. Khachiyan called her an amazing talent with no fear. While Paikidze choosing not to play is a major setback for the US, they are still a strong team and will be aiming for a medal. While both American teams are favorites to do well, the Norwegian teams are underdogs. Norway will likely not top their fifth place finish last olympiad, with their top two boards deciding not to play. World Champion Magnus Carlsen has decided not to play, as opposed to his opponent in the World Championship in November, Fabiano Caruana. However, Carlsen will be playing in the European Club Cup at about the same time of year. Board 2 Jon Ludvig Hammer also decided not to play. Junior World Champion Aryan Tari will be Board 1, but Norway just doesn't have a strong enough team for me to see them doing well. The situation is similar with the women's team. While Norway is young and powerful, their players need a little more experience and strength to get higher ratings and do better. Without Carlsen and Hammer, it is almost impossible to top fifth place, but they will certainly try.
