The American-Russian paradox: One is chasing historic gold at the Chess Olympiad, the other is not allowed to play

American Levon Aronian and Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi BENGALURU: For most of the 20th century, the Chess Olympiad was one of the few arenas where the Cold War was actually played out on the chessboard. The Soviet Union considered the biennial team event a matter of state prestige, fielding squads stacked with world champions and winning eighteen gold medals between 1952 and 1990.The United States, briefly dominant in the 1930s behind Frank Marshall’s golden generation, spent the second half of the century chasing that shadow. The closest they came was in 1976 when they won gold only because the Soviets and their Eastern Bloc allies boycotted the tournament in Haifa, Israel due to FIDE’s refusal to move the venue. Boris Spassky’s defeat of Bobby Fischer in Reykjavík in 1972 remains the sport’s most mythologised individual clash, but the Olympics have always been a collective version of the same rivalry.After fifty years, the framing has completely reversed. Russia inherited the Soviet Union’s chess machinery after 1991 and won until 2000, when they finally matched the United States with six Olympic golds apiece.But as the 46th Chess Olympiad in Samarkand approaches from September 15-27, it is the United States that is sending a stacked five-man roster chasing team glory, and Russia will be unable to send anyone at all for the third straight cycle.Levon Aronian will play for Team USA this September alongside Fabian Caruana, Wesley So, Hans Niemann and Awonder Liang, with IM captain John Donaldson and coach GM Grigory Oparin.It will be Aronian’s third Olympics since moving from Armenia, a country for which he won gold as part of three separate Olympic winning teams, to the United States in late 2021. He made his U.S. debut in Chennai in 2022, won team silver on board 4 in Budapest in 2024, and now arrives in Samarkand with unusually specific ambitions.“I thought it would be a good time to win an Olympics because I don’t know if there are many people who have won four Olympics,” Aronian said during an exclusive interaction with TimesofIndia.com. “I haven’t checked. I’d like to join that club.”When asked which teams besides India stood in the way of obvious rivals, Aronian did not hesitate to name a few.“It will be difficult against Uzbekistan. I also think that China can be very strong; they always have underrated players,” says the veteran grandmaster. “Traditionally, Armenia can play well and this time I think Germany is also a good team.”He currently plays for Ganges Grandmasters in the Global Chess League (GCL) and feels the league could be a useful test against exactly the kind of pressure he will face at the Chess Olympiad.“There’s always tension in this tournament. Teams want to play well. It’s good to simulate a situation where everything depends on you. It always happens,” added the 43-year-old grandmaster.On the other hand, there will be no equivalent increase for Ian Nepomniachtchi. The current Russian No. 1 and two-time World Championship challenger will not be in Samarkand after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ordered FIDE to suspend the Russian Chess Federation following a complaint by the Ukrainian Federation about tournaments being held in occupied territory.The FIDE Council only partially complied with the decision, prompting protests from several national federations. Politics came to a head in the sport itself in July, when FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovych, a former Russian deputy prime minister, voluntarily stepped down from his duties after being added to the European Union’s sanctions list.“It’s very unfortunate,” the 36-year-old Russian grandmaster told this website exclusively on the sidelines of the GCL. “Even worse, we had very high hopes. Russian sport is coming back this year, and there are a lot of teams in other sports participating in the World Championships. We would expect chess to be one of them as well.”“But maybe the fact that Dvorkovic got on the sanction list at the beginning of the summer brought some changes. There was also the unfortunate case of CAS, which did not turn out well for the Russian Chess Federation. Even after that, we expected the participation of Russia, maybe in a neutral position,” added Nepo. However, the request to play under a neutral flag was not granted.Not to be too critical of the situation, just hoping that everything will be resolved for the sake of the sport. “Belarus is playing and Russia is not. Let’s hope things get better; for sport, not just for sport,” noted the Ganga Grandmaster icon player.The two situations side by side hardly resemble the same sport.One player is perfecting his personal best and sees the franchise league as a dress rehearsal for a tournament he expects to win.Also read: 8 months, flights from Moscow to Munich, but now he is ‘tired’: Ian Nepomniachtchi’s tattoo behind Russia #1The other is watching the competition unfold without him, for reasons that have nothing to do with how he plays chess.It’s a reminder that the Olympics, throughout its history as a proxy battleground between Washington and Moscow, has at least always been a battleground that both sides could enter. In Samarkand this year, as in the previous two editions, only one of them.