Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday congratulated Humpy Koneru for winning chess competition – 2024 FIDE Women’s World Rapid Championship – for the second time and said, ‘only Indian to achieve this incredible feat’
Following the PM Modi posted on X, “Congratulations to @humpy_koneru on winning the 2024 FIDE Women’s World Rapid Championship! Her grit and brilliance continues to inspire millions.”
“This victory is even more historic because it is her second world rapid championship title, thereby making her the only Indian to achieve this incredible feat,” he added.
Earlier in the day, the 37-year-old bagged an epochal second World Rapid Chess Championship title after beating Irene Sukandar of Indonesia in New York.
She had won the event back in 2019 at Georgia and the Indian No 1 is only the second player after China’s Ju Wenjun to clinch the title more than once.
The 37-year-old Humpy finished the tournament with 8.5 out of 11 points.
What Humpy said?
“I’m very excited and I feel very happy. In fact, I expected it to be a very tough day, like some sort of tie-break. But when I finished the game, I only got to know when the arbitrator told me, and it was a tense moment for me,” said Humpy.
“So, this is quite unexpected because the whole year I have been struggling a lot and I had very bad tournaments where I just ended up in last place. So, this came as a surprise,” she added.
Humpy admitted that she was not thinking about the title after her first-round defeat here.
“I think, after the first round loss, I was nowhere thinking about the title, but things turned out well, especially yesterday winning the four games in a row helped me,” she said.
Her achievement capped a sensational year for Indian chess following D Gukesh defeated China’s Ding Liren to emerge champion in the classical format World Championship recently in Singapore.
In September, India had won its first-ever gold medals in Open and Women’s categories in the Chess Olympiad in Budapest.
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