Paris and beyond: Young showstoppers step up

A world chess champion at 18. A double Olympic medallist shooter at 22.

- Rutvick Mehta

No Olympic champion, but two Chess Olympiad gold winning teams.

The Olympic year for India may have been a mixed bag, but it was also one that unearthed unparalleled achievements in chess.

The showstoppers featured two young protagonists who captured the imagination of sport followers beyond the cricket field and stamped their world-class skills across the chess board and inside the shooting range: Gukesh D and Manu Bhaker.

Manu, just 22 who had been through a full cycle of tasting dizzying success at an early age followed by dampening failure, sprung back to life with a bang in a largely moderate Paris Olympics for India. Gukesh, all of 18, who had until last year pasted photos of past world chess champions as his laptop wallpaper, became one himself to sign off India's sporting 2024 on a high.

That Gukesh's tryst with becoming the youngest-ever world champion went back to a late scramble to even qualify for the Candidates tournament is a touch ironic. Once the teen from Tamil Nadu set foot down that path, there was no stopping him.

Alongside R Praggnanandhaa and Vidit Gujrathi, Gukesh turned up for the Candidates in Toronto in April battling odds to earn the right to challenge world champion Ding Liren. Pre-tournament punts, though, went up in smoke once Gukesh got down to business against some of the top players.