‘Unless You’re Viswanathan Anand’: Old Clip Viral After India's Historic Win At Chess Olympiad

India created history by clinching gold in both the Open and Women’s chess championship at the 45th Chess Olympiad, held in Budapest, Hungary from September 10-23, 2024. They also claimed the Gaprindashvili Cup for the best-combined results in the Open and Women’s sections.

Chess master Vishwanathan Anand was quite confident about the win as he said he could already smell gold. Now, Vishwanathan’s podcast video from 2021 is going viral which perfectly fits the description of his ranking in the field.

This video is from the podcast DRS with Ash where Indian cricketer Ravichandran Ashwin interviewed Vishwanathan. The legend narrated one of his experiences in Kerala.

He first shared some thoughts about how the perception of chess has changed over the years and narrated an incident about an old man he met on a train in Kerala. While talking, the man wanted to know about Vishwanathan’s line of work. When he replied saying he played chess, the old man quizzed, “That’s fine, but what do you do for a living?” Vishwanathan then explained playing chess was his job and that he had been a professional chess player for years.

The old man went on to ask whether Vishwanathan’s family owned a business. He clarified his family did not own a business. At that point, the man came up with advice. He clarified that sports in the country were incredibly unpredictable and that one could barely build a career in chess, for instance, unless they were Viswanathan Anand. He advised and proposed to take into consideration the consequences associated with his profession.

When the story was over, Ashwin asked Viswanathan whether, at least, he informed the man that he was Viswanathan Anand. He retained a very simple answer, “No, I didn’t.”

The video has garnered above 41,000 views on the social media platform.

At the recently concluded 45th Chess Olympiad, India secured team gold for the first time, which makes them the third nation ever to achieve this, following the Soviet Union and China.

The Indian men’s team scored 21 match points to top the chart, four points ahead of five teams tied for silver. Whereas, the women’s team got to clinch gold with a tally of 19 match points.