Many teams were in contention for the gold medal going into the last round, but in the end the right teams wound up on the Olympic podium.
It was the Uzbekistan team that took the gold, defeating the Netherlands 2.5-1.5 in a match that probably could have gone (at least) 3-1. In the end, though, the only decisive game was on board four, where Jakhongir Vakhidov won with Black against ratings favorite Max Warmerdam. Vakhidov outplayed Warmerdam in the early middlegame, and a single slip that could have let his opponent escape was almost immediately “forgiven”. Warmerdam was given no further chances to avoid a loss, and while Vakhidov could have won more quickly, the main thing is that he won and never let his opponent back into the game. So, congrats to Uzbekistan and their young team!
Scoring the same number of match points but coming in second on tiebreaks was Armenia. Their board 1, Gabriel Sargissian, had a poor first half of the tournament, drawing a bunch of games before losing to Dommaraju Gukesh, but he finished like a boss. He went 4.5 out of his last 5 games, and in this round he achieved his team’s only win. Boards 2-4 of the match with Spain were drawn, but on board 1 Sargissian defeated Alexei Shirov. Congrats to the Armenians as well, who achieved this without Levon Aronian. (Incidentally, Uzbekistan was also missing their historically greatest player, Rustam Kasimdzhanov.)
Finally, India 2 won convincingly over Germany, with wins on boards 2 and 4. They took clear third, and almost certainly would have won the event were it not for Gukesh’s tragic and completely unnecessary loss to Nodirbek Abdusattorov in round 11. Nevertheless, Gukesh won the gold medal for the best performance on board 1, and he will almost certainly be joining the world’s absolute elite very soon. Congrats to these youngsters, who may be feeling more disappointment than elation, despite their fantastic performance overall.
A point behind, three teams tied for 4th-6th, missing the podium. India 1 was 4th on tiebreaks, ahead of the U.S. and…Moldova?! The first two teams played each other, splitting their match with Arjun Erigaisi defeating Leinier Dominguez on board 3 and - good news for his psyche - Sam Shankland defeating S. L. Narayanan on board 4. As for Moldova, they were massively outrated by the English team, but beat them anyway thanks to Vladimir Hamitevici’s win on board 2, with the black pieces, against Luke McShane. Not a bad performance by the 48th seeds!
More games later; for now, here’s the game that won the Olympiad for Uzbekistan.